Shock Gloves Used On Students

We had barely had a chance to register outrage over the plan to spend $20 million taxpayer dollars on shock gloves for ICE (so they can be more abusive in less obvious and photographable ways) when the news dropped that Omaha public middle and high schools are already deploying the gloves for use against students. 

The Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter (G.L.O.V.E.) is similar to a taser but doesn't break the skin with darts (because abuse that doesn't leave a mark is easier to hide). Compliant Technologies ("#1 in hands on de-escalation") has loads of demonstration videos. They were out plugging this thing three years, simultaneously arguing that on the one hand it will bring quick compliance and control and on the other hand is kind of like that thing chiropractors use on patients.

GLOVE is being used by school resource officers in Omaha and were purchased and deployed by the Omaha police department. McKenzy Parson for KETV passed along this delightful quote:

"What we've seen thus far is immediate compliance," Jason Cvitanov said. "That's a benefit to everyone involved, because it is such a low level of force being utilized by officers, which is the goal in every situation, gaining control, using just enough force to accomplish that task. And this would be after de-escalation attempts as well as verbal commands being provided."

Cvitanov appears to be both an Omaha police officer and a consultant with a group of "elite level professional combat athletes, law enforcement, military, and medical professionals." The Omaha police department spent about $60K on 40 gloves.

The gloves have apparently been used twice in the last year. NPR figures about 50 police departments are using the devices in about 20 states. Fortune reports "The CTG-5 G.L.O.V.E. products deliver shocks ranging from 324 to 362 volts and have a hard operational limit of 380 volts. By comparison, a taser can reach between 1,200 and 1,500 volts."

There are so many differences between a cop operating in a situation where someone has broken the law and an SRO operating in a situation where a student is being non-compliant, but here's one that doesn't get discussed often enough. A police officer collects someone who has broken the law and puts them into the legal system, and the two may never interact again as they each move on in a multi-level, many-parted world.

But to claim that using force -- electrical or otherwise-- against a student will never qualify as de-escalation, because the school is a small, closed system, and the use of force to solve a problem changes the student's relationship with the school and all the parts of it. That was part of the concept of SROs in the first place-- instead of the faceless scary authority of a uniform and badge, students could develop a daily relationship with Kindly Officer Krupke that would, hopefully, make it easier for Kindly Officer Krupke to intervene in positive and de-escalating ways. I know there are other reasons to oppose SROs, but I've seen this particular aspect work, sort of, in my old school.

But if Kindly Officer Krupke is going to become the guy who slammed a kid's head into the floor or gave her the old grab-and-zap for not complying with directions quickly enough, the school is building a different sort of relationship, and it's not helpful to anyone. If we're going to move the most dysfunctional sort of police-citizen relationship into schools, one based on forced compliance and authoritarianism, that will be bad for the culture of the school and the education of the students.

GLOVEs are worse because they are so easy. Now adults who already outclass students with size and strength don't even have to work up a sweat. Kid pisses you off? Just grab and zap. It's lazy authoritarianism, cheap and easy compliance culture.

GLOVEs don't belong anywhere, but they especially don't belong in schools. We unquestionably have issues with discipline and student conduct in schools, but this is not the way. Sure hope it doesn't spread.  

TX: DEI and National Board Certification

Texas previously created an incentive program for National Board Certification of Teachers, complete with $$ "reimbursement" for districts, but it may scuttle that because of scary DEI.  NBTC hasn't been hugely successful in Texas-- only about 1,178 out of 320,000 teachers have the certification. But it looks that's 1,178 too many for some legislators. Because "tolerance."

The state is pushing the National Board to comply with Texas's version of a "Don't Say Gay" law.  The Texas State Board of Education is worried about the diversity, equity and inclusion content-- especially when it comes to gender and sex stuff, as reported by Jaden Edison for the Texas Tribune.  

“About 10% of the training that a teacher would go to is based on DEI, gender identity and sexual orientation — and how to help transition children — which violates our state law and violates parental rights,” board member Julie Pickren said during the April meeting.

Pickensd shared some of the offending passages:

Teachers design and implement lessons that help students develop awareness of, sensitivity to, and respect for others. For example, accomplished teachers are aware that children may begin to question their sexual identity at a young age. Teachers know that acceptance of their curiosity will make them feel safe and secure. In such instances, teachers may feature children’s literature in which diverse gender roles are portrayed.

Yes, that sounds just terrible. Students wrestling with questions about their sexuality should understand that their curiosity and confusion is unacceptable, and they should not expect to feel safe and secure at school. 

Edison has continued to follow this story; I wish more reporters were doing so. I won't pretend the issues here aren't complicated and difficult, but the moment policy makers decide that parents have all the rights and children have none, they've embraced a "solution" that is simple and wrong. Children are not chattel.

It makes me wonder-- if parents have thrown their LGBTQ child out of the house for coming out, would a school district be contradicting parental choice and thereby violating one of these parental rights laws by trying to help the student deal with homelessness? 

ICYMI: Breathless Edition (8/15)

I swear-- I'll be back up to speed soon. But in the meantime, I wouldn't dream of leaving you without the week's reading recommendations. 

Facebook Billionaires Walk Out On Impoverished Students

If you haven't yet heard the story of Zuckerberg dumping yet another education-flavored project, Thomas Utican has it for you.

OMB and Russell Vought Receive 497,000 Comments on Controversial New Universal Grants Guidance

Jan Resseger reports that the Trump administration is getting some pushback on their latest hairbrained idea.

Humans understand what AI cannot

Helen Keller, AI, and teaching. From Ben Riley.

Despite their rhetoric, Private Schools aren't dramatically boosting teacher salaries with their unconstitutional, taxpayer funded windfall

Ohio's taxpayer-funded vouchers were supposedly going to boost private school teacher pay. Stephen Dyer has some actual facts to show that doesn't seem to be happening.

Does Alpha School Work for Regular Kids?

Short answer: no. Dan Meyer has a longer answer involving Alpha's sub-business called Unbound.

Tennessee School Privatization Group Seeks to Build Propaganda Machine

Somebody in Tennessee is hiring, and Andy Spears has some details. Anybody want to be a privatization PR shill?

"Outsourcing Discrimination"

It's not enough that religious schools want taxpayer funding-- they also want to leave their discriminatory practices in place. Josh Cowen explains the problem and looks at one possible solution.

Supporting Teacher Growth Through Trusting Relationships

Randi Brown writes for edutopia about a hot new concept-- maybe if admins treated teachers like human beings...

Improvisational theatre, meditation, and games support anxious teens

I taught theater, including improv, so this bit of research reported by Jonathan Kantowitz caught my eye. 

(Not) Everything Changes

"This changes everything!" Audrey Watters reminds us that this is pretty much never true in education.

Just a photo this week. This is Sabbaday Falls in the White Mountains, a sort of mini-Flume right off the Kancamagus Highway. It takes a long time for water to cut through rock like this, but nature is patient. May we be the same.

Federal Voucher Money Will Not Go To Public Schools

Remember "backpacks full of cash"? It was a phrase coined by reforster Jeanne Allen that captured the way that taxpayer-funded vouchers turned private school students into couriers, bagmen who simultaneously delivered and laundered taxpayer dollars so that public money could be directed to private religious schools. We may someday be nostalgic for the era in which such manipulations were necessary-- "Once upon a time, not only was the government not required to fund religious organizations, but they were actually rquired NOT to."

Vouchers were always an elegant solution to the question of "How do we get public money to private schools?" Private schools were already funded by a stream of students carrying backpacks stuffed with their parents' cash. To get government-to-school funding going would require a whole other stream to be created, but vouchers could just hop onto the stream that already existed. Parents could stuff the backpacks with taxpayer dollars as well as their own. 

It's important to keep this model in mind when discussing one of the hot issues around the federal voucher system.

Voucher fans argue that federal vouchers will benefit public schools, which is a careful choice of wording because the federal vouchers will not go to schools-- they will go to families, to shove into their child's cash backpack.

For private schools, that's a distinction without much difference, because vouchers pack new cash into the same old funding stream. But for public schools, it's a completely different issue.

The public school funding stream is taxpayer to government to school district. There is no public school version of a funding stream fed by individual students carrying backpacks full of cash. That is, in many ways, antithetical to the public school mission.

In the private school backpack model, the size of the student's backpack determines where they can go with that load of money. A large backpack full of loads of cash? You get to go to Philips Exeter. A fanny pack loaded with a small, lonely stack? You gete to go to Bob's Strip Mall Academy. 

How the market treats you depends on how big and how stuffed your backpack full of cash is.

The public system is designed to work differently. All the cash comes into one big pool, and every student gets to swim in it regardless of what their familiy's contribution might have been. (Does it work perfectly? No, particularly because of the ties to housing. The irony here is that the public mission is undermined by market forces in the housing market).

Point is-- federal voucher dollars are not going to go to public schools unless the public schools can figure out a way to create the new funding stream for students carrying cash backpacks, and that create a whole new set of issues. If a special tutoring program is available to Susie because she has a backpack of federal voucher money, then why shouldn't that tutoring be available to any or all students, regardless of backpack status? 

Addendum: If a district already has a program that charges fees, then the federal voucher would help families pay that fee, but that would result in zero new revenue for the district.

If a public school sets up a program for backpack-bearing students to pay for a basic service, how do we square that with the mission of providing the same basic service for all? If a public school sets up a program for backpack-bearing students to "buy" an extra service, how do we justify only providing that special service to some students?

These dilema are unavoidable because, again, the federal voucher program will not give money to schools, but to students. For private schools, that will mean business as usual. For public schools, that will mean a new business model that will have to somehow co-exist with the traditional public service mission. There are undoubtedly some public districts out there well-positioned to wrestle with this issue, but it would be great if governors and districts put some real thought and discussion into the issue, because federal voucher dollars will only make it to public schools via a new and potentially troubling path. 

More Excuses for Screens in Schools

At first glanece, the recent Matt Barnum interview with Richard Culatta, the CEO of ISTE, might seem to feature the head of that tech-pushing giant backpedaling (or maybe even backpeddling) on the big tech push that has drawn such backlash lately. But let's look at what he says again:

On the backlash:

You know, in some ways I’m surprised it’s taken this long. I was watching how we were managing technology in the wake of COVID, and we were not doing it very thoughtfully. When you start handing out devices very quickly without preparing teachers, without carefully selecting the tools, without monitoring them for quality, stuff starts to go off the rails.

 On bad tech in schools:

People very quickly want to focus on the tools, on the screens, and it just doesn’t line up with what we see. It’s almost entirely about how the technology is used. In some cases, we have kids just clicking next through PowerPoint, and that’s terrible learning. That’s just the equivalent of a worksheet on a screen.

So I think we just need to have a moment where we go back and say ‘we did things wrong.’ Unfortunately, what we’re hearing are far less effective strategies. I mean, our friends in L.A. are doing the worst possible approach to trying to course correct.

He's referring to recent policy decisions in LAUSD calling for limits on screen time.  Which Culatta thinks is a bad idea. 

But is he saying here that we made a mistake putting all those screens in front of youthful eyeballs? 

He is not. He is, in fact, using one of the most popular dodges in the annals of bad education policy ideas, fully recognizable to anyone who was teaching during the Common Core backlash.

Our product is awesome! You're just implementing it wrong.

Culatta admits that somebody, somehow, might have overpromised with ed tech, but, hey now-- let's not get crazy:

I don’t think it was oversold. It was oversimplified, and so this idea that you could just put some software in front of a kid with no need for a teacher anymore — I mean, we’d hear stuff like that. What happens is when there are big sweeping statements like ‘oh technology will solve everything’ and then it doesn’t — of course it doesn’t — then people think technology is garbage, and we should ban it.

Yes, it was absolutely oversold. Hell, it's still being oversold. And not in a "we'd hear stuff" from who-onows-where way, but in a pushy deiberate ed tech company marketing way. We've got entire schools (looking at you, Alpha School) selling themselves as "No teacher needed-- magical AI ed tech will do it all, and in only two hours a day."

Notice that he also skips right over the question of whether there is something fundamentally problematic about ed screens. It is true that not all tech packages are created equal, that software (like paper books) come in both well-designed and stunningly crappy varieties. But it is also true that we haven't dealt nearly enough with the ways in which parking a student in front of a screen turns a process that rests of social and human dimensions into a process that is isolating and humanity-deprived. I don't care if you have the best damned software in the world-- I still don't want my child spending a huge chunk of his school day staring into the electronic abyss.

Screens are inevitable. Screens are good. You just have to make sure you do screens the right way. This practice is as old as a Studebaker dealership-- it's called assuming the sale, and it gets the customer to talk about how they're going to buy your product rather than question whether or not they ought to. Ed tech just layers on "Well, if it's not working, that's because you're using it wrong." None of this is particularly helpful right now. I get that, to  edit a phrase, there's no point in hoping someone will ask questions when his livelihood depends on not asking those questions. But somebody has to ask them, and we all have to pay better attention to the answers we get.

ICYMI: Lakeside Edition (8/9)

The Institute continues its remote operation this week, so output is down a bit. We are conducting some deliberate field tests of enforced boredom, a parenting technique in which one refuses to provide one's offspring with constat entertainment, thereby forcing them to create their own activities. This actually works pretty well for the Board of Directors, which is encouraging. 

But I've still got a reading list for you. Make the best of it.

Science of Reading Mandates: Who’s Listening to The Experts?

Nancy Bailey breaks down the spread of Science of Reading and offers up a handy list of actual experts who deserve some attention while this wave is rolling through.

Trump’s Dept. of Ed. Rescinds Longstanding Formal Federal Rules Protecting Black, Brown, and Native American Students’ Civil Rights

Jan Resseger looks at the end of "disparate impact" policies-- basically, it now only counts as racism if someone annunces that they are introducing a policy for racist reasons.

The Trump team gives Head Start the DOGE treatment

Checker Finn may be a long time reformster, but he has also turned out to be a fairly reliable measure of what actual conservatives think of MAGA policies like gutting Head Start.

Florida AG’s threat to Catholic schools ‘clear violation’ of the First Amendment, law scholar says

The violation in question is not allowing religious exemption from vaccine requirements, because religious freedom means the state gets to tell you how to practice your religion.

The Silly Season Comes to School

TC Weber looks at some beginning of year shenanigans, and even if you aren't in Memphis, you're going to recognize some of them.

An alphabet without an F: AI slop seeps into Teachers Pay Teachers curriculum marketplace

Can't say I was ever a huge fan of Teachers Pay Teachers, but now Lily Altavena at Chalkbeat reports it's one more place crowded with AI inaccurate slop.

Art Made Us Human

From history professor Steven Mintz, one more answer to why AI is bad for us and some excellent historical context for the importance of art.

Why the Democrats Probably Won't Save the Humanities

Cultural Knowledge explains why the Dems are not going to rescue the humanities. Famliar problems with a slightly different framing.

Texas Republican Platform: Leaving Children Uninsured, Underserved, Unheard, and Unprotected

Bruce Lesley finds the Texas GOP platform less than great for children.

Give Them an Inch...

Jess Piper looks at the Heritage Foundation's desire to get rid of women's sports (because they make women all uppity)

The Phonics Gambit: The Zombie Reading Policy that Fails but Won't Die

Paul Thomas has the numbers for yet another phonics-forward policy that doesn't actually seem to work.

Primary schools to be told to identify children at risk of future unemployment

This is from the UK, but it can certainly serve as a cautionary tale for the US.

I love a good cross-genre cover.

Covid-19: Once Upon a Time...

Lord knows I don't really want to revisit those halcyon days of 2020, but we are apparently going to be subjected repeatedly to fantastic tale of What Happened iBack Then The rough outline goes something like this:

In 2020, Dr. Fauci manufactured a panic over Covid-19 which was A) basically harmless, B) manufactured by the Chinese and/or C) some sort of Deep State plot. The teachers union forced (somehow) schools to close and then proceeded to keep them closed practically forever for no good reason at all, because teachers were excited about getting a paycheck for doing nothing. 

I'm going to skip over some aspects of this fairy tale other than to point out that A) the leader of the US government in 2020 was President Donald Trump and B) millions of people died, including millions of people in countries all around the world, which is a hell of effort to make for a conspiracy aimed at fooling the American people.

But I do want to write down my own narrative from those days, jsut so that I can get it out every time US politicians are making me feel as if I'm nuts.

Covid-19 dropped for realsies in March of 2020. We had just started to hear about it, and then we were all on lockdown. Spring musicals all across the country were shut down. It was sudden and scary. "Just for two weeks," at first, and then indefinitely, when it became clear the spread wasn't slowing. Local districts here scrambled to cobble together some sort of distance learning. For districts like the one my wife works in, that sometimes meant teachers hand-delvering packets to student homes. 

My newest grandson was born in March. I was booked to fly to Seattle to meet him. The airline postponed the flight, and then postponed it again. When the twins were exposed, it took a few days to find a place a couple towns over that could do testing. We ordered a lot of take-out in hopes it would keep our favorite restaurants in business.

Infrmation was soarse and uncertain. The feds, given a chance to show real leadership in a time of challenge, ttally biffed it. Betsy DeVos made one good call-- no Big Standardized Test in spring of 2020 (a decision that would mobilize an entire industry to launch a push to bring those tests back ASAP)-- but otherwise told local schools they were on their own. Your local newspaper was probably publishing a daily number of infected, hospitalized, and dead. Some of them were teachers. Tick, tick, tick.

It became quickly clear that the school year was over. Maybe we could regroup in time for the fall.

The summer was filled with handwringing. Nobody (with the exception of a few outliers and the ed tech industry) wanted to do more distance learning, zoom school, or otherwise continue the excrutiating experiment of the spring. But what to do instead? I wrote the following in June 2020:

We know that nobody really knows how dangerous re-opening schools will be. Will students become super-spreaders, sharing it at school and bringing it home to vulnerable family members? How great a risk will teachers be running? 

We know that “official” guidance on how to open schools is in short supply, and that what is out there is, for teachers, mind-boggling. The average teacher’s reaction to CDC guidelines is an eye roll powerful enough to shift the earth’s axis. Teachers have conjectured repeatedly that the members of the CDC must have never set foot inside a school, but that’s not the CDC’s job. Their job is to figure out what safety would require. Somebody else will have to figure out how, or if, that can be done.

Finally, we know that based on everything we think we know right now, the price tag for safely opening schools again is huge. Lots of folks are trying to run numbers, and everyone agrees that the figure will be in the billions—many of them. And simply throwing up our hands and going back to some version of distance learning is, we already know, not much of an option—unless we pour a bunch of money into getting it right.

That, of course, did not happen. Instead, the fall was marked by variations of this conversation:

Leaders: We really want to get these schools open again.

Teachers: Thank God. So what are we doing to mitigate danger to teachers, students, and families? Mandatory distancing? Regular testing? Air treatment for classrooms? School issued masks? What are we doing to keep everyone safe?

Leaders: Yeah, that stuff would be really expensive, so we thoughgt we'd, you know, open the building and let you all take your chances.

Teachers: We would really rather not do that.

Leaders: See, everyone! The teachers are refusing to re-open the building, for some unknown reason.

Remember all the fun variations in the fall of 2020? Split the student body in half and run alternate days, or morning and afternoon school. Have teachers teach half the students in person and half over the internet. Open full in person, but any time someone tested positive, send the class home for 5 days of Zoom school. All of these variations had one thing in common-- a shit ton of extra work for teachers. Betsy DeVos popped up to tell us "we're all in this together," which was some real baloney.  She was busy harnessing Covid panic and discontent to sell school choice. 

The fall of 2020 was a mass of school approaches. Cautious parents stuck to pods. Plenty of private and charter schools, as well as schools in states with powerless unions, chose to stay closed. More information about Covid suggested that children weren't in as much danger, but it was still unclear how much danger an infected Junior was to Grandma. Testing and reporting was by and large on the honor system.

By the fall of 2020, districts were pretty much on their own to make decisions. That was a challenge. It was not a good omen when administration at my old district decided to hold a planning session in person and it turned into a mini-spreader event. 

In my corner of the world, the fall and winter of 2020 were actually the worst part. Our numbers were low in September, but by December everyone knew somebody who had been hit by the virus; many folks knew someone who had died. Our local hospital was at capacity. While people were still arguing that it was just like a bad case of the flu, a former thirty-something colleague was describing how Covid made it exhausting for him to climb steps, and hard to just think clearly. 

You may have forgotten the timeline, but it was mid-December before vaccines were available. Trump could have justifiably claim them as a triumph, a win for his administration, but by then the loons were hollering at full volume, so, you know, maybe drink some bleach or have some horse worm medicine, but don't let them stick you with that secret micro-ship. Some of those anti-vax folks were teachers. 

In 2020, most people did the best they could with limited information and rudderless government. Hindsight shows that some choices could have been better, but hindsight does not set policy. Millions of people died, millions more were hospitalized, and yet six years later, we're dealing with folks who insist that it wasn't real. That the teachers union somehow kept schools closed for no good reason because, I guess, teachers wanted to collect their big fat pasychecks for doing work that was harder and more grueling than their usual work. "I don't want to go back if you won't take steps to keep us all safe" has been shortened to "I don't want to go back."

The Covid story is a variation on an old education theme-- society faces a problem, won't muster the resources to fully address the problem, leaves teachers to pick up the slack (see also IDEA). All Covid added was a layer of A) the problem was made up and B) it was teachers' fault. 

So if, like me, you hear the Covid rhetoric and wonder if your memories of 2020 are somehow defective, I'm here to tell you you're not imagining things.