Teaching and the $1.98 Porsche

One of the most widely read pieces I ever wrote was a piece for Forbes about the need to stop talking about a "teacher shortage," which incuded this paragraph. 

You can’t solve a problem starting with the wrong diagnosis. If I can’t buy a Porsche for $1.98, that doesn’t mean there’s an automobile shortage. If I can’t get a fine dining meal for a buck, that doesn’t mean there’s a food shortage. And if appropriately skilled humans don’t want to work for me under the conditions I’ve set, that doesn’t mean there’s a human shortage.

That $1.98 Porsche line has been quoted more than a few times, and I have continued to try to argue for different framing for nthe widespread problem of staes that cannot find enough qualified people to hire for classrooms. 

The discussion of that shortage has simmering since the pandemic because COVID and the reaction to it (including the bizarro revisionist history that insists that schools were shut down for no reason at all by the teachers unions) were no help at all for the already-struggling recruit-and-retain machinery of the teaching profession. 

Matt Barnum (thank goodness he's back at Chalkbeat and out from behind the WSJ paywall) has been digging through numbers to unveil the reality of the problem, and Anne Lutz Fernandez continued the discussion with a well-sourced post asserting that yes, there is a teacher shortage. In discussing that post, a poster in Bluesky broughht up the $1.98 Porsche isn't a shortage line, and Fernandez made this sensible reply

I agree with him in principle, but I have to come to believe that if we don't call it a shortage, there is less political pressure to do something.

True enough-- especially because so many folks have tried to argue that there isn't really a shortage (these are almost always on the national level because on the state and local level everyone knows they are having trouble filling teacher spots.

But I will continue to stick up for the Porsche line. Here's why--

When I conclude that there's a Porsche shortage because I can't buy one for $1.98, I am really arguing that the problem is not me, and therefor the solution does not rest with me. And that kind of thinking continues to be a problem with the troubles with recruiting and retaining teachers. "There's a teacher shortage" is too easily interpreted by policy makers as "Kids These Days just don't have the proper attitude toward service." And the "shortage" frame leads to terrible solutions like creating a program in a box that any shmoe can deliver effectively, or hiring anyone with a pulse to stand in a classroom. 

The problem, declare policy makers, is out there somewhere. Certainly here in the room with us.

Barnum and Fernandez note several of the obvious reasons that teaching is a less attractive profession these days. Low pay, especially if you compare it to the pay for similarly-educated professions. The rising tide of bad behavior from students. The onslaught of attention-sapping technology. The insistence that good education is only for the right people and for other people we just need schools to crank out compliant meat widgets to serve corporate overlords.

There are more complex issues. Take the steadily collapsing pipeline; fewer students enroll in teacher prep programs, and colleges respond by cutting those low-yield programs.

There is the absolute unrelenting negativity directing at the profession. Twenty years ago, American schools were failing, and it was all teachers' fault. Then teachers were run down as groomers and pedophiles. Then they were part of the evil conspiracy behind COVID. Commies and traitors! If you aren't on the ground, in schools, I'm not sure you can realy grasp just how relentless and ugly the steady denigration of teachers has been in this country for the past few decades. And the folks who could be the next generation of teachers have had a front row seat.

Couple that with the rise of test-centered schooling, in which the teachers' job was reduced to Getting Students Ready for the Big Standardized Test (which in turn would be the one measure of how good the teachers are). Micro-management and dis-empowerment stripped the profession of much of what made the profession appealing. And I don't think we too easily overlook the fact that college-age students today have never known any kind of school except test-centered schooling. Test prep and data obsession-- that's the normal they grew up with. We have raised a multiple-choice generation and now they are unprepared for an essay question profession.

There is a shortage of quality teachers in this country, but it's a mistake to accept certain implications of "shortage"-- that the teacher tree has failed to. bear fruit or that a generartion of teachers was lost to drought. It's a mistake that goes hand in hand with the notion that teachers are born and called rather than made and recruited. It's goes hand in hand with the mistake of blaming the raw materials of the profession rather than the system that is failing to support and produce them.

The teacher shortages across the country are a symptom of larger problems in our entire cultural relatuionship with education and the young. There are no quick, simple solutions, and the start of any improvement will be more discussion of the shortages by people like Barnum and Fernandez who are willing to look past the folks who are sad about the lack of $1.98 Porsches. And Fernandez is exacty right-- whatever we do, it needs to put pressure on the policy leaders who are making the decisions that are breaking the pipeline.

ICYMI: Down East Edition (8/2)

The Board of Directors, CMO, and I are currently operating from the Maine field office, an annual adventure completre with woods, water, a little ocean, and other rebalancing team building exercises designed to increase our synergistic effciiencies with extreme fidelity and also fried clams and devil dogs. But there is still reading to be done.

Ridiculous Headlines about Public Education

Nancy Flanagan takes us on a stroll through the latest is silly education headlines.

The Best Correspondent’s Dinner Message That Should Not Go Unnoticed!

Nancy Bailey caught a widely ignored speech at the correspondent's dinner from Weijia Jiang, Emmy Award-winning television journalist. 

The Alpha School Debate

Natalie Wexler has mined a considerable number of materials related to Alpha School. None of it makes them seem less snake oily, but specifics are always nice.

Who Is Watching Nevada's classroom technology?

Kelsey Penrose writes for Carson Now about the parents pushing back against ed tech in Nevada.

Arizona judge strikes down GOP ballot measure threatening teachers unions' existence

The Arizona GOP keeps trying like hell to keep the public from having any say about taxpayer=funded vouchers, but the latest attempt to screw with the voters has been struck down by a judge.

Most Adults Don't Want Standardized Testing and Neither Do Kids: So, Why Do We Still Run Schools Around It?

Bruce Lesley has done plenty of homework on this answer to the decades-old question.

How a years-long rise in teacher turnover reshaped American classrooms

Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat has been looking at the data about teacher turnover, and he's drawn some conclusions.

Three Things I Would Encourage Every Teacher To Do Going Into This School Year

Marcus Luther offers some year-launching advice for teachers. It's a good list.

Your Reading is Out of Control

Rachael Gabrield presents an altern ative view of the current handwringing over the student reading crisis.

Anthropic Launched Claude for Teachers. We Blocked It for Our District.

Want one more post slamming the advent of Claude for Teachers? This one from Joe Phillips is excellent.

At Forbes.com last week, I wrote about to make a writing classroom AI-resistant, and about a study showing the school sports are more available to some than to others.

Turn this one up.

The Bad Administrator Matrix

Teach long enough and you learn that it's a mistake after the announcement of a change in administration, "Well, at least it can't get any worse." It can always get worse. 

What's surprising is that sometimes the new boss can be totally different from the old boss, and still be terrible. How can that happen? Let me offer this matrix as an explanation of the very different ways in which a school administrator can be terrible.

We can do this with two axes. For one, we have the benign-toxic axis. Here we're charting the difference between an admin who is an actual toxic, negative presence in the district and one who is not at all angry or destructive. On the benign, we have an admin who avoids conflict and strife at every turn-- even the conflict and strife that are necessary and unavoidable. But hey-- maybe if we all get along, problems will just kind of take care of themselves. The toxic admin creates a poisonous atmosphere, hoping to stay in charge through fear and conflict. 

For the effective-ineffective axis, we're talking about how effective they are at implementing whatever idea has taken root in their head. Do they have a vision with no clear, concrete way to implement it, or are they skilled at dragging their ideas into life.

Let's look at each of the quadrants.

Benign-Effective

This administrator is loaded with ideas, and she knows how to implement them. They just aren't ideas that help teachers get education done in the building. Benign admins often focus on ideas that miss the point, like special "morale" contests that reward the teacher with the best classroom door with an extra jean day. You feel bad complaining about the benign-effective admin because they aren't scary or abusive. But when you need help with a problem student and they can't help because they're in a meeting with the parent-advisory group in charge of getting new flower pots for the front entrance, it gets kind of annoying. 

The benign-effective admin seems to be getting stuff done, but none of the stuff is particularly helpful, and sometimes (like the time she wanted your department to get all of the scores from the Practice Big Standardized Test into a cool spreadsheet) it can come with tremendous opportunity costs. The workplace atmosphere is pretty okay, but still you may feel like a hamster on a treadmill, running hard and getting nowhere and doing it all with no support.

Benign-Ineffective 

This clueless goof means well (probably) but they have not figured out that they are in charge, yet. Your tongues is almost entirely bitten through from all the times she has said some version of, "Yeah, you're right. That's definitely a problem. Someone should do something about that" and you have wanted to scream, "You!! You should so something about that!"

You have a lot of freedom under this sentient jello sculpture, but unfortunately so do your most irresponsible colleagues. And every teacher in the building knows that the admin will provide zero assistance with discipline issues. You aren't afraid that you'll be facing any danger from the front office, but you always feel as if any other corner of the building could combust at any second.

Toxic-Ineffective

Cannot figure out how to make anything, but will rant and bully the people he thinks are failing to understand. He used to be a classroom teacher who never explained his expectations to his students and then browbeat them for not meeting those expectations. Now he runs staff meetings where people shoot each other frightened glances of "Do YOU know what the hell he's complaining about." 

Often this is the admin who gets angry about things that he doesn't understand, and so he's angry a lot. His building smells like sweat and fear, his staff unsure about what might set him off next. But somebody is going to pay a price.

Toxic-Effective

At his worst, this bad admin also likes to rule through fear and threats, but he also understands that just flailing around won't get the job done. He's a snake, not a bull, and everybody had better watch their backs. He knows how to undermine a staff member or get vengeance on an employee who crosses him. He knows how to force people out just because he doesn't want them there. And he knows how to play the politics and ally-building necessary to get away with whatever wants.

He enjoys flexing his power, but like all bad admins, he's not particularly focused on the idea of educating students. He just wants to dominate and control, the feel the raw rush of power. Of the four types, this is the one most likely to be a full-blown sociopath. He gets stuff done, but he makes sure that nobody can ever really relax and feel good about it.

There are ways to deal with each of these types, from sycophantic up-sucking to staying so very still and quiet that maybe you won't be noticed. And every one of these quadrants can look actually not so bad to people stranded under the leadership of one of the other quadrants. But these folks are all bad bosses, a testament to how, yes, sadly, it can always be worse. 

ICYMI: 170th Anniversary Edition (7/26)

I have played trombone in our town band since I was in eighth grade. It is a special kind of treat to sit on that bandstand in the park, playing with a group of amateur musicians for members of the community. This week we celebrate 170 years of musical service to the community. We were founded in 1856, and without accomplishing any particular world-shattering achievements, we have kept on playing for all those years, and I think that's pretty cool (I've researched and written an entire book about it if you're interested in this kind of thing). This afternoon I'll kick off our week with a talk about the history at our local music museum-- also a cool thing. My small town has its share of cool things. 

Here's the reading list for the week. Remember to share the things that speak to you. In this age, everyone can be an amplifier.

What Actually Makes a Classroom Work Has Nothing to Do With What You Teach

I have some quibbles with this post from The Rea; Classroom (I'd absolutely add "know what the hell you're talking about" to list, which absolutely has to do with what you teach) but she still has some good points to make in this list.

In home state, Moms for Liberty shows lackluster influence in school board races

Trinity Webster Ross reports for the Florida Trib on the waning influence of everyone's favorite culture panickers.

Big kids, big problems

Men Yell At Me is usually more political and cranky, but this post about parenting teens is beautiful and on point.

Gifted and Talented Education Issues

Thomas Ultican unpacks some of the problems still plaguing gifted and talented education.

Boys Should Go to Music Camp

Retired music teacher Nancy Flanagan is right on the mark here. 

Sally the Robot Was Coming to a New York School. Then the Plug Was Pulled.

Looks like the AI teacherbot might not be coming to Salamanca after all. From New York Times (if I did this right, a gift link, maybe?)

Why Is Claude for Teachers

Anthropic is making its bid for a slice of the education pie, and Ben Riley correctly questions why this is even a thing.

Who Is Ed-Tech For?

Audrey Watters is likewise skeptical about this newest iteration of edutech and puts it in the context of other bad edutech ideas as only she can.

Why Educators and School Leaders Should Be Skeptical with Anthropic's Free AI Access Offer and How to Protect Their Schools

Yeah, Anthropic has stirred up an ocean of skepticism. John Robinson reminds us that there is nothing free-- just the hope that you'll be so hooked that you'll be willing to pay later.

Big tech pitches AI for teacher burnout. Educators call it a Band-Aid

Devin Pavlou at San rounds out the mini-list of Claude-doubting. Come for this quote from Martina Meijer: 

“We’re training their models for free, and they’re telling us it’s a gift,” Meijer said. “No, no, no — our labor, our experience, our intellectual work — that is a gift. And I don’t give that gift to corporations. I give that gift to children.”

By One Dishonest Measure

Gary Rubinstein puts his number crunching skills to work dismantling claims about how many students are "trapped in failing schools."

Why we can't have nice things

Jeff Waid has some thoughts about why teacher well-being is so often administration talk and not action.

A Fairy Tale Reform

Larry Cuban shares the tale of a reform attempt from the 1930s, a study that was swallowed by the war, but deserves just a little bit of attention.

Ohio Legislature Ensures that Public School Funding Will Remain Inadequate and Grossly Inequitable

Jan Resseger suspects that the Ohio legislature doesn't actually care about public education. 

Put to the Test

Ted Dintersmith is an interesting animal, a rich guy who has dabbled in education but seems to have done so with actual interest in learning stuff rather than imposing his own genius ideas. Here he draws some conclusions about the Big Standardized Test as a central feature of education.

Meta is testing an AI bedtime story app for people with no imagination

I love a story that wears its attitude on its sleeve. Amanda Siberling at TechCrunch looks at Zuckerberg's latest boneheaded idea:

The good news about StoryKit is that it could be a lot worse. Meta regularly ships boneheaded ideas like Instagram deepfake generators and “pervert glasses.” Comparatively, is it so bad to doom children to soulless bedtime stories? Should we have expected anything better from the company that promised us a utopian world of virtual reality work meetings?

Short, worthwhile read.

Your Cookware Got Worse On Purpose

I discovered a new-to-me newsletter this week (thanks, Joanna) called "Worse on Purpose" and this post is a fine introduction. 

When a brand changes hands this many times, the name becomes the product and the pan becomes a cost to be managed beneath it: thinner steel here, an offshored handle there, a warranty rewritten by lawyers instead of engineers, and so on…

Yes, this website is about markets and products and consumers and enshittifcation, which are not obviously education issues, except that in a country where people are trying so hard to turn education into a market commodity, we really need to pay attention to how the marketplace actually works these days.

At Forbes.com this week, I look at the latest chapter in the Maine lawsuit-fest that is still trying to establish a religious school's right to discriminate as it wishes while demanding taxpayer dollars to fund its discrimination. Also, maybe states considering federal vouchers should also consider some regulatory guardrails to go with them. 

The band has a theme song; here we are playing it at the beginning of our 150th anniversary concert (for which we invited back former players). Not exactly perfect video quality from our local cable access station, but you get the idea.

Subscribe and get all the stuff, for free.

The Conversation We Aren't Having

Since the days when Milton Friedman first cast his gaze on public education, education debates have been heavily influenced by a conversation we mostly haven't had.

Yes, there have been pushes to break the teachers unions. Yes, there has been lots of maneuvering to break the public system so that the parts can be sold off and the gazillion dollar edu-piggy bank can hoovered up by profiteers. Yes, there has been plenty of noise about accountability, plus, heaven knows, no end of debate about choice. And these days there's a whole other bunch of noise about parental rights. 

The thing is, as much as we talk about these topics, we're really talking-- indirectly-- about something else entirely. 

We're talking about rewriting the foundational principles of our public education system. We're talking about shifting the responsibility for children's education. 

Look at how we talk about school choice. There are many ways to provide educational choices, but choicers only really discuss one-- choice based on the idea of education as a commodity supplied in a free(ish) marketplace. 

In this conception, the community has no responsibility to educate your child. That's your problem, to be solved as the best you can with whatever resources you have at your disposal. The old promise-- that as a society we would get the best possible education to every single child, regardless of zip code-- would be null and void, and families would be left to rise or fall based on what they and they alone can bring to the table.

That major shift in How Education Works is masked a bit with the promise of vouchers-- a little money that families could use to pad their limited resources (though the advent of universal vouchers guarantees that the gap between the wealthy and the not-so-wealthy will remain exactly the same). The major shift is also sold with decades of insistence that the traditional public system is broken, even dangerous.    

It's not that we have ever done a perfect job of fulfilling the promise of a decent education for every child. It's not even as if we started making the promise for strictly noble, egalitarian reasons ("Let's get those delinquents off the street"). But way too much of the education reform debate has not really been about fulfilling the promise, but about changing the promise.

This goes double for the MAGA crowd, for whom any sort of societal responsibility is anathema. Society is composed of layers, their premise goes, and no government should interfere with those layers naturally sorting themselves into winners and losers, based on what they deserve (because some people are, in fact, more deserving of power and privilege than others). There should be no SNAP or social safety net, because the poors should be left to their well-deserved fates. DEI should not be used to lift non-white folks out of their proper position of subordination to white folks. The government should not be supporting health care or pushing vaccinations, because those who aren't strong enough to deal with illness and disease should be left to their well-deserved fate. And the education system should not be some sort of socialist scheme for lifting all children.

This is the conversation we aren't having--

Do we want to try to for a collectively funded, owned, and operated system that tries to deliver an excellent education for every child, or do we want a system in which each individual parent must navigate a largely unregulated market in which they get whatever quality of education they can personally afford?

We really need to have that conversation, because it lurks and nibbles at the edges of every other conversation we have about education. We really need to have that conversation out loud, because we keep trying to have it without having it, and it makes much of the education debate more tiring than it needs to be. 

Three Guiding Principles of Alpha School

I've been following Alpha School ever since the days they were trying to launch a cyber school in Pennsylvania. The picture that emerged (here's the piece) was of some folks with tech expertise, finance skills, PR savvy, and absolutely no clue about education. I expected this snake oil operation to burn out quickly.

I was wrong. My collection of Alpha School PR links just keeps growing, people keep taking them seriously, and, most important to their business model, rich folks keep forking over huge piles of money.

God bless Todd Feathers over at Wired, who seems to have noticed that the emperor's wardrobe is a bit lacking. "Alpha School’s Ritzy New York City Campus Costs $65,000 a Year—but Isn’t Actually a School" looks at Alpha's decision to open a school in Manhattan, and then, when the state department of education denied its application to become an independent school, just pivoted to becoming a sort of homeschool hub-thing.

The basic Alpha School pitch is simple. Two hours of screen time are enough to teach students all the core content they need. The rest of the day can be "projects" and "activities" and just generally stuff to keep your child from having to come home by noon while allegedly learning grit and entrepreneurship. There are no actual teachers involved anywhere in the process (though as Feathers notes, MacKenzie Price, the face of the school, has said that they use the words "guides, coaches, teachers" interchangeably.

Feather's article reminds me of three guiding principles that Alpha follows.

1) The ultimate Big Standardized Test result

When high-stakes testing accountability swept the education system, some schools adapted by cutting recess and reducing time in non-tested subjects like science and history and the arts. But what if you were willing to go whole hog and simply cut everything in your education program except test prep for the Big Standardized Test. I give Alpha School credit for just one thing-- dropping all pretense that they were delivering some sort of well-rounded education, and then offering as an academic brag their results on test scores.

2) The Trumpian approach to rules

Feather uncovered memos that show a clear priority-- get schools open quickly, even if you have to cut corners to do it. Trump's whole life has been organized around a particular approach to rules-- if people can't punish you for breaking them, then they aren't rules. And as many corporate bigwigs know, a fine is not so much a "penalty" as a "fee paid to break a rule." Student safety? How much do we have to pay to be exempt from certain requirements. One Alpha School is still operating in areas where they don't have occupancy permits from the fire department. Said one memo, "Opening date > safety > operability > cost efficiency > permanence." 

Another memo explained the need to move at "Alpha speed." 

The only reliable way to achieve Alpha’s opening timelines is subtraction: fewer approvals, fewer handoffs, fewer phases, fewer assumptions, fewer permanent decisions. If a step survives only because ‘that’s how it’s done,’ it is not neutral, it is actively sabotaging the opening date.

3) Selectivity as a marketing tool

Feather provides a picture of how marketing documents framed the approach:

To sway families in places like Miami, New York, and San Francisco, Alpha would need to “invert the power dynamic,” the document says. “We deliberately limit enrollment opportunities, create waiting lists even when capacity exists, and establish application windows that close regardless of capacity—triggering the scarcity psychology that accelerates decisions and enhances perceived value.” It goes on: “We must compress the entire decision process into 48 hours through a carefully orchestrated immersion experience that provides all necessary information, emotional connection, and social proof within a concentrated timeframe, culminating in a binary decision point with genuine scarcity pressure.”

Internal documents note the need to attract the "right" families. I have seen reports that Alpha also screens students for their ability to stay engaged with a screen for at least twenty minutes.

And, of course, the hefty price tag, ranging from $40K in Texas to $65K in Manhattan immediately filters out plenty of prospective customers, while fostering an image of an elite, exclusive operation. Phillips Exeter Academy tuition is $71,797 for students who also get room and board; $56,077 to be a day student at the exclusive prep school. For a school that offers two hours a day on screens with a few more hours being "coached" to price itself in the same league is astonishingly ballsy.

But then, astonishingly ballsy is very much the Alpha School brand. Some days, MacKenzie Price reminds me of Elizabeth Holmes-- repeatedly and charismatically claiming that things that are almost too impossible to believe are true. 

Price also brands Alpha as a school for rebels, badmouthing public education and arguing that she (and her husband and their gazillionaire partner) have cracked the code to making education swift and simple and easy and awesome, and it sure seems unlikely but, oh, wouldn't it be great if it were true, and after all, she's got a big following on social media and outlets keep running her claims and the schools keep spreading and parents keep forking over their money, so surely what's she's selling is real and true (even if Alpha has still avoided any sort of independent examination). 

I suppose it's possible that, somehow, Price is On To Something. But as hard as I squinty, I can't quite make out the emperor's wardrobe or screensaver or whatever. I appreciate writers like Feathers who help me believe I'm not crazy. 

Chesterton's Fence

There are plenty of laws that come up in discussions of modern education reform. In particular, we talk about Campbell's Law and Goodheart's Law, both of which focus on the idea that once you focus on mastering a measurement, that measurement becomes useless (e.g. once you organize your school around getting better test scores, those tests scores cease to provide any real useful data). 

But there's another fine model, known as Chesterton's Fence. It comes from author G. K. Chesterton, and the idea is simple--

Don't tear down a fence until you know why someone put it up.

Just because you don't understand why a particular process, procedure, or tradition is in place, that doesn't mean you can remove it without ill effect. Not until you understand what the original purpose was, and what removal or change would do to that original purpose.

Education has been plagued with reformsters who want to see changes, and they want to see them Right Now. They rarely want to try to understand how aspects of the system were put in place, even if there is history to show that systems are in place in response to failed versions of that same reform in the past (check out works by Adam Laats and Audrey Watters to see historical reform failures laid out in familiar relief). 

Individual schools also suffer from new administrators who make decisions based on the understanding that "kept things running as they always have" isn't nearly as sexy on a resume as "change agent." They will be quick to pick out fences they can tear down and may not even stick around long enough to build anything in their place. 

Chesterton's Fence does not suggest that no fence should ever be taken down; it may very well turn out that removing the fence is a great idea. But when you are contemplating the removal of a fence, it is wise to know what problem the fence was solving, what the current status of that problem is, and what might happen if the fence is removed. Some unanticipated results occur precisely because nobody took the time to try anticipating them. Nobody took the time to ask why the fence is there or what might happen when the fence is blown up.