Kristoff Loves That Asian Bootstrapping

Nicholas Kristoff is part of the New York Times stable of amateurs with high-profile unfounded opinions about education, and last week he decided that maybe we should be more like Taiwan or Vietnam. 

He waves vaguely in the direction of societal commitment to education (the headline is "What if the Valedictorians in America's Schools Were the Cool Kids," which, in assuming that they aren't already the cool kids, reveals its own biases). He talks about visiting schools in Asia since the 1980s. "Every time I visit, I feel a pang of envy for societies that seem to value education more than America does."

Okay, I feel his pain here. Our country's attitude toward education mirrors our attitude toward young humans-- we make a lot of noise about valuing them, but when the rubber meets the road, it turns out there are plenty of other things we value way more. 

Kristoff, however, is not so much focused on what society can do to live up to educational value as he is on how such a value will inspire students to bootstrap the hell out of themselves. He focuses on stories like the girl who works full time and studies full time so that she can go to college (she sleeps for two AM hours at her workplace if things are slow). Or the student who eschews dating because in these countries "respect for education is so deep that it can even overwhelm youthful hormones."

He nods to the idea that such obsession stifles creativity and robs children of fun and youth. He also nods to the fact that some nations devote huge amounts of money to education (Taiwan mandates 22.5% of net budget revenues go to education). He notes these things with a "Yes, but" and swings right back to promoting a culture obsessed with education so that young humans will feel moved to grab those bootstraps. He Yesbuts his way past poverty, inequity, and injustice without examining how this A) restricts access to both education and bootstraps and B) how education obsession doesn't seem to have mitigated the issues.

Most of all, he doesn't examine the Rugged American biases that lead him to center this story about education valuation on students rather than, say, political leaders and other adults who throw society's weight behind education. This is the Rugged Individualist dream-- students who rise up and doggedly pursue education without any powerful adults doggedly working to make that pursuit of education more doable. It is an Asian version of a familiar story-- the heartwarming portrait of a young human overcoming obstacles without ever questioning why those obstacles are requiring overcoming in the first place.

Kristoff might want to take a look at the work of Yong Zhao, the China-born scholar who has plenty to say about the Asian brand of education obsession.

But mostly he might want to look at his vision (and it's a vision shared by many) that a more education-valuing society would look pretty much exactly like our society right now, except that students would work harder.

He ends the piece with some questions: "Maybe we could acknowledge the inequity of local school finance that results in sending rich kids to good schools and poor kids to weak schools? Perhaps politicians could stop demonizing universities and taxing their endowments? What if we respected human capital as much as financial capital?"

Those are not bad questions. But they need to come at the beginning of a piece, not as a sort of post-script of a piece that is mostly about something else entirely.

Will School Choice Kill Athletics?

Nancy Bailey, a retired teacher and longtime blogger, asked a good question this week-- Will school choice destroy athletics as we know it?

Let me provide the answer from Pennsylvania-- the shape of high school athletics "as we know it" is already deeply influenced by school choice.

It's worth remembering that we have always had school choice-- what we're talking about these days is really taxpayer-subsidized school choice. But the school choice we already have in Pennsylvania is more than enough to shape the athletic landscape.

Right now, the top rankings of high school basketball are dominated by Catholic high schools, with a few private schools thrown in for good measure. Flip back through the years on sports site MaxPreps, and you'll see the same names year after year. Same thing for girls' basketball. You can see the same thing in football, though not quite as pronounced. 

But if you are a Pennsylvania high school enjoying a really good year in sports, you will almost certainly meet one of the usual private Catholic schools on your path through the playoffs. 

The secret is recruiting, and it works just like college. Woo the family, promise a good spot on a successful team, and throw in a hefty scholarship. Plus, perhaps, some help in relocating the student or even the family to the location. In my state, Catholic and other private schools recruit-- and they recruit hard. We think of "school's choice" as gatekeeping-- the school just sits there and sifts through the applications that come in. But for high stakes operations like these, recruitment is a big deal. Schools actively choose students without passively waiting for them to show up.

Pennsylvania privates enjoy an extra advantage. We classify school sports through A rankings (Single A all the way up through 6A) based on enrollment size-- not the size of the population the district serves. So 2A public schools with small student bodies get to compete with 2A Catholic schools that also have small student bodies--but which can draw from students anywhere in the state. (And if you call them out on this in, say, a local newspaper column, their athletic director will send you a cranky letter filled with non-denial denials.)

Recruitment is a feature of choice, and always has been (it was used by the "miracle" T.M. Landry school). Because schools need to be able to do marketing, they will go after students who can help them with that marketing, whether it's by strengthening a sports program or helping a high-profile marching band or keeping test numbers up. Turning school choice into taxpayer-subsidized school choice just supercharges the whole business, putting more money into the recruitment kitty. 

Nancy Bailey's piece covers other states and has some excellent references-- you should read it and keep in mind that in some states, the transformation of school sports by school choice athletics began years ago, much to the frustration of many public school programs. 

The Feds Push School Prayer

Last week the U.S. Department of Education offered some "guidance" on prayer and religious expression in public school. 

“The Trump Administration is proud to stand with students, parents, and faculty who wish to exercise their First Amendment rights in schools across our great nation,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “Our Constitution safeguards the free exercise of religion as one of the guiding principles of our republic, and we will vigorously protect that right in America's public schools.”

To be clear, the rights of students to freely exercise their religion has never been in question. Well, okay-- the right of Christian students to freely exercise their religion has never been in question. What has been "in question" is the rights of school-adjacent adults to practice their religion in ways that pressure students to follow along. 

The guidance still recognizes some restrictions. They point out "Public schools may not sponsor prayer nor coerce or pressure students to pray. For example, a school principal may not lead a prayer at a mandatory school assembly." Also, you're allowed to shut down a student whose prayer disrupts class (as long as you are consistent in restricting other forms of class-disrupting speech). 

But there is still plenty of baloney here. Schools should not "favor secular views over religious ones or one religion over another." This follows the religious conservative view that secularism is just another religion (albeit a naughty anti-god one). That's incorrect (I get to it in greater lengths here and here) much like saying that the plate a meal is served on is one more food item. If I never talk to my students about what person they should marry when they grow up, that is not suggesting that they shouldn't get married at all-- it simply leaves that conversation for a more appropriate person to have at a more appropriate time in a more appropriate place. 

The not favoring one religion over another is also problematic. Exactly who gets to decide A) what counts as a legitimate religion and B) what counts as favoritism? 

The guidance calls for judging religious speech with same standards as secular speech, for exampling "a paper with religious content," which I think can assume refers to the bullshit case of the Oklahoma student who trolled her trans professor with a terrible religious content, just so she could make a fuss about it. 

The department cites the Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the case of the football coach who wanted to pray on the fifty yard line and made it to the Supreme Court, where the justices decided in his favor by using a legal technique known as Making Shit Up (the scripture you're thinking of is Matthew 6:1-- Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them). Coach Kennedy promptly quit his job and went on the conservative speaker circuit.

In that vein, the regime's new guidance declares that "visible, personal prayer, even if there is voluntary student participation in such prayer, does not itself constitute coercion." As long as the teacher doesn't say, "Come pray with me" or "Points off for anyone who doesn't pray with me" or "I will think less of those of you who don't pray with me" it's okay. Even if it is obvious to the students that these are on the table. "Voluntary" is doing some real heavy lifting here.

Like the Kennedy case, this pretends that if a teacher isn't directly commanding students to join in, there is no coercion or endorsement going on. And it is certainly true that some students are pretty well inoculated against any such pressure (I am thinking of a Jewish student of mine whose elementary teacher tried to nudge her toward Jesus). 

But at the same time, these are the folks who are sure that students should not be exposed to any mention of sex or LGBTQ persons. If we were using a similar approach to religion, the rule would be that teachers can't even mention that any religions exist and any books that include characters who pray would be pulled from the library. 

Look, this is a tricky issue, with schools landing all over the place and finding a variety of ways to be wrong, from the school that forbid a student to pray in his graduation speech to the school where the superintendent opened an elementary choir concert with a Jedsus prayer. And just wait till some teacher decides to open class with an Islamic prayer or starts Transcendental Meditation club during the school day. Or when teachers start praying in front of the class for God to support a particular politician. 

If only there were a way to accommodate a variety of deeply held personal religious beliefs in a space shared by many members of a pluralistic society. It would be so important we could attach it to the Constitution, like an amendment. I think it would be important enough that we could put it first.

Seriously-- the framers covered this. Make a government-run institution like public schools a religion-free zone, in which no religions are required, practiced, or endorsed. Let people of all ages pursue their religious beliefs on their own time (particularly if they are adults in position of authority).

It will be messy and difficult at times, but certainly more valuable and useful for the health of society than, say, letting each group of believers hide together in their own silo, or allowing one group to dominate the school. It would require balance and negotiation and occasional pauses to think about where lines should be drawn and to reel in overzealous folks on one side or another, but all that would be good practice for living as an adult human in a pluralistic society. Yes, I realize that some folks are very anti-pluralism these days, but I don't think that's very American of them, and I look forward to the day when we can replace this not-very-helpful guidance. 

ICYMI: Tech Sunday Edition (2/8)

I'm directing a community theater production of I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, a show you probably don't know but should. 4 actors play 52 characters in 20 vignettes about love and connection. The show starts with getting ready for a first date, conducts a wedding before intermission, and finishes up in a funeral home. It is warm and tuneful and captures a lot of the beauty and hilarity of ordinary moments. The cast has worked hard, and this is the week we do the final work of getting ready before opening next Friday night. If you're in the neighborhood, by all means, stop by. 

This is part of how I stay charged up, because if you gaze into the contentious abyss that is our current national state of debate about every damn thing, you can forget what is great about being human in the world.                          

And now, this week's reading list.

Legislative Extortion bill would withhold more than $4.3 billion from 700,000 Ohio public school students

Stephen Dyer has been on a tear lately, but so has the Ohio legislature. I wrote about this extortion bill this week, but this post gives more details on just how much damage this would do.

Mobile Co. Public Schools request US Education Secretary McMahon visit rescheduled

McMahon's right wing history tour hits yet another snag. What a shame.

"A deliberate effort to circumvent the law"

Steve Nuzum reports from South Carolina about some voucher-loving senators who are sad that home schoolers are getting in on their pile of money.

I Can't Learn It For You

Matt Brady with some words that most teachers will recognize in reaction to too many familiar student claims.

Unanimous committee vote halts wide-ranging education overhaul

Mississippi was thinking about a big fat voucher bill, but after the House passed it, the Senate has (as promised) shot it down.

Ramaswamy’s proposed rule for public schools highlights Ohio’s lack of rules for private schools

Vivek Ramaswamy is running for Ohio governor, and he has a bunch of dumb ideas about education. But Denis Smith points out that at least some of his pronouncements have a different side effect.

Teens should read great (but hard) books: 'Macbeth' is better than 'Hunger Games'

Joanna Jacobs weighs in on and aptly summarizes last week's online discussion of the place for "hard books" in the classroom.

Stop trying to make the humanities 'relevant'

I missed this essay by Thomas Chatterton Williams when it first ran in The Atlantic a month ago, but here it is on MSN out from behind the paywall, and worth a read as he considers teaching the humanities in the rise of ChatGPT. 

NYS: Why Are Authoritarian Entities Needed to Create Charter Schools if They Are So Popular?

Shawgi Tell asks the million dollar question-- if the public really really wants charter schools, why don't leaders use democratic means to create them?

Why some Texas private schools are not accepting school choice vouchers

Texas has kicked off its taxpayer-funded school voucher program, but not all private schools have signed on. Lacey Beasley at CBS News interviews a private school head who explains why she's not on board. Short, but you'll recognize some of the issues. 

Debunking the latest The74 miracle charter school story

Gary Rubinstein checks out the latest miracle school headline and finds, once again, no actual miracle in evidence.

How to Teach Authentic Christianity in Public Schools

Nancy Bailey has the answer (hint: it doesn't involve throwing immigrants in detention centers).

When "Parental Rights" Become a Shield for Child Abuse

"Parental rights" are headed for several courtrooms. Bruce Lesley breaks down the implications and problems connected to the Texas case and the problems of child abuse.

What Are “Parental Rights”?

Steve Nuzum takes a deeper dive into the legal and ethical aspects of parental rights and "parental rights." 

Rent-a-Human, When AI Becomes (Almost) Everyone’s Boss

Julian Vasquez Heilig warns that AI is not just stealing your job-- it's stealing your boss's job, and that means work is getting lousier for you.

I used AI chatbots as a source of news for a month, and they were unreliable and erroneous

From the file of things that are so obvious nobody should have to say them, except that I know too many people who need to hear it. Jean Hugues-Roy ran a little French experiment.

This week at Forbes.com I looked at an exceptional new book about the "miraculous" T.M. Landry private school in Louisiana. Great work by journalists Katie Brenner and Erica L. Green. 

Why tenors like to gather in groups of three I do not do, but thank heaven they do.

The Administrative Plague

In the last year, Commonwealth Charter Academy (the 800 pound gorilla of cyber schooling in PA) has poached an assortment of teachers from the public schools in my area. I'm not a fan of the choice, and I fear they may live to regret it, but I understand why they did it.

Why would excellent public school teachers leave for a profiteering edu-flavored business. You may think the answer is money, and money was certainly involved, but the answer seems to be much simpler; it was respect. Many of those teachers felt disrespected, and not just once, but systematically and repeatedly over time; CCA treated them like valued professionals, and that made a huge impression.

It reminds me that teacher exodus is largely fueled by local issues, and that old saying that people don't quit jobs--they quit bosses. 

Disrespect has always been endemic in education. Teachers are too often treated like children. Teachers are too often treated as a management problem to be solved rather than valued professionals to be supported. Teachers can feed into the dynamic themselves. Teachers tend to be rules-followers, especially compliant in buildings that can be built, top to bottom, on compliance culture. But that doesn't absolve those administrators who are bad managers. And bad management, I'm quite certain, is at the heart of many teacher shortages around the nation.

Administration's main job in school is to A) hire the best people they can find and B) provide the conditions that allow those people to do the best teaching they can. Failing to do so leads to many of the problems facing schools.

You can look through stories about our knowledge of why teachers leave or why they stay (try here, here, here, and here). Let's take a look at the list.

Low pay looms large, particularly in some states. I'll give administration a pass on that one. 

Lack of support from administration and the community. Yes, there is a steady background hum of accusations ranging "teachers stink" all the way to claims that, somehow, vast numbers of teachers are secretly engaged in criminal activities. Administrators don't create that buzz (mostly), but they are the folks who should be dealing with it. 

We don't need more cowardly admins who fold every time a cranky community member complains. Should admins be responsive to the public? Absolutely. Should they base district policy on the goal of avoiding any conflict with any parent ever? No. If admins policy is "Don't ever mention anything in any way related to gender or race or sex, because if you do, I will throw you under the bus so fast you won't have time to cover your face," they are part of the problem.

There are plenty of lists that talk about "empowering teachers" or "elevating teacher voices," but it can all be simplified to "Treat teachers with respect. Treat them like trusted professionals." 

Working conditions: other staff. You know who hates that one terrible teacher in the building almost as the parents of that teacher's students? The teachers who have to work with her--particularly those who have to clean up after her the following year. 

That terrible teacher is not a union-caused problem. It's an administration problem. It may be that the hiring process is broken. It may be that the admins have failed to support that teacher into a better place. Edward Deming had a saying to the effect that if there is dead wood in your organization, then either A) it was dead when you hired it or B) you killed it. Behind every teacher who's failing at her job, there's an administrator who isn't doing his. 

Working conditions: student behavior. Blame the parents if you wish, but the front office has so much to do with this. Students know whether "getting in trouble" means minor inconvenience, free break time, or an actual reason to make better choices. The employment of empathy and understanding does not mean there shouldn't be consequences. 

And if the teacher is botching the job, then an admin should be right there helping her do better.

Long, long hours and heavy workload. Yeah, a problem forever, but admins have the power to help. Cut administrative burden on teachers (does that new computer program save work, or transfer the work from your secretary to the classroom teacher). Cut class size. Cut timewasting baloney (do you really want to pay someone with a Masters degree professional level money to watch children eat). Reject the notion that teachers are only doing Important Work if they are in front of students.

Respect, respect, respect. This drives everything else. Do not subject your teachers to treatment that you would not tolerate were it directed at you. And do not let them be subject to treatment by others that you would not tolerate for yourself. 

And that includes listening to them when they have something to say about how the school is run, how classrooms are managed, or how education will be delivered. And when they run into the bumps of life happen, you can step up with empathy, or you can treat the teacher's problem as if it is an inconvenience for you ("Why did your father's funeral have to be held on a busy Friday at the end of the grading period!")

Nor can we blame individual weaknesses for all of it. There are systemic contributors to bad school management. The reform movement of the past few decades has dumped a ton of responsibility on administrators while stripping them of ability to deal with it. Our regime of bad high stakes testing created an almost impossible challenge, hog tying many better administrators and chasing others out of the building, to be replaced by people whose grasp of the job is, well, limited. 

I'm not saying a great administrator cures all ills and solve all problems. And, like teachers, there are administrators who may be great at one part of their job and terrible at others (there are so many ways to be a bad administrator). But bad management is grievously under-discussed as a contributing factor in education problems in general and teacher retention in particular. State leaders aren't having the discussion, and the feds certainly aren't going to, but that doesn't mean you couldn't be talking about it in your local district. 

My Local Paper Bites The Dust

My local newspaper is shutting down.

The newspaper is published as two newspapers (same content, different mastheads). The Derrick, as the name hints, goes back to the days of the oil boom in Western Pennsylvania. The News-Herald is the fusion of two newspapers that merged a little over a century ago. A few decades ago, they were combined into one news operation. Like many other news outlets, they also entered the online world, experimenting with different versions of paywalls. They were about to be sold, but that deal fell through, and the company, citing the usual (drop in subscribers, drop in advertisers). The last issue will be published on March 20.

It is hard to describe just what a gut punch this is to the community. The newspaper is where people read about local sports, school board meetings, city council meetings, obituaries, and a wealth of stories about local people and activities. The newspaper has been doing just what a small local paper needs to do-- providing news and coverage that local folks couldn't find anywhere else. 

Will someone pick up that slack? There are no radio stations with local content. We are located about halfway between Erie and Pittsburgh (which has newspaper problems of their own), too far outside their media markets for them to bother with coverage of our area. We have a local county-level web site that so far has had about one reporter, and has depended on looking over the newspaper's shoulder for much of its content. They are now advertising an initiative to scale up, but that's going to involve creating basically a whole news organization from scratch.

For local organizations and government bodies looking to communicate with the community, the prospects are now much dimmer than ever. 

The newspaper was our newspaper of record. Who lived here? What did they do? What were their stories? All of that was set down in print. Now what will become of all those stories of all those lives? How will history be recorded? Will history be recorded? A big city may have other avenues for creating those sorts of records. We do not. 

The loss feels very personal. Pieces of my own history are in that record. A photo of my family when we moved to town. High school graduation stories. Pictures of my kids in local events. My father's obituary ran in the newspaper; when my mother passes, where will that life be noted?

And, as longtime readers may recall, I have written a weekly column for that newspaper for almost 28 years. The pay was--well, I don't think cutting my pay would have saved the paper-- but the chance to create something that added to a unique local flavor gave me a sense of giving a tiny something to my community. And the writing discipline required to meet a weekly deadline has shaped who I became as a writer and a teacher. It's a big chunk of my life to say goodbye to. 

Journalism has always relied on a problematic business model ("We will gather a crowd and sell you access to their eyeballs") married to a sense of civic responsibility with an occasional too-large helping of political opportunism ("You provide the pictures and I'll provide the war"). I wonder, too, about the effects of our economic split-- particularly the finding that the wealthiest 10% drives 50% of the spending. What does that mean for areas like mine where the wealthiest 10% don't live? 

Our new situation is already the situation of many communities across the country, news desserts now lacking one of the main sources of glue that holds a community together. People make a lot of noise about how journalism is important for keeping an eye on officials and bringing to light shenanigans and misbehavior, but local journalism is also hugely important for telling and sharing the stories of the people share community with. The small triumphs, the minor milestones, the rich and varied stories, the slow unrolling of history, and all the other part of the small town narrative that the AP is never going to pick up-- that's what we lose.

Instead we're left with the sloppy ephemera of facebook gossip and other social media baloney. It sucks.

I am sad for all the people who are losing their jobs and all the stories that now will not be told and the huge gap this will create in my county. This is terrible news; ironically, it may be the last terrible news that the newspaper reports. 

More Federal handouts For Charter Schools

Among the various bills thrown at Congress is one that finds new ways to throw public money at charter schools.

HB 7086, the "Equitable Access to School Facilities Act," proposes to send money to charter operators, via the state, to buy and build facilities for schools.

The cost of coming up with a building to put charter schools in might seem like part of the cost of being in the charter school business, but charter operators don't much care for having to fork over the money. In some states, legislators have solved the problem by just allowing charter schools to just take public property. Florida is rolling out a law that lets charters take public school real estate in whole or in part just by saying, "Hey, we want that." It's an extraordinary law, sort of like the opposite of eminent domain, in which the facilities that taxpayers have bought and paid for suddenly belong to a private business. 

HB 7086 wants to propose a similar federal solution, delivering grants to any states that come up with clever ways to gift taxpayer dollars to charters that want to build or buy some facilities, or want to come up with fun ways for charters to grab taxpayer-funded buildings.

The bill comes courtesy of Rep. Juan Ciscomani, an Arizona Republican, who just wants to make sure that every school is a great school. In a press release, he explains:

Sadly, access to appropriate and affordable school buildings for charter schools continues to be one of the biggest barriers to growth. Unlike district schools, charter schools aren’t guaranteed access to school buildings or traditional access to facilities funding sources like local property tax dollars.

Yeah, I was going to open a restaurant, but access to food and cooking supplies was a big barrier to growth, so maybe the taxpayers would like to buy that stuff for me?

Or maybe when you decide to go into a business, you do it with a plan that takes into account the cost of being in that business. Certainly the notion that building and financing facilities is easy peasy for public school systems is disconnected from reality. When West Egg Schools want a new building, they have to convince the taxpayers or else that school board will find themselves voted out of office. 

If you want to get into the charter school biz, you need a plan about how you'll manage the cost of getting into the charter school biz. "Well, get the feds to drain taxpayers to fund it for us," is not such a plan.

Also delighted by the bill is BASIS Educational Ventures, the big honking charter chain that may have the occasional financial issues, but gets a pass on having to display financial transparency. 

The bill does display one of the lies of the charter movement-- that we can finance multiple school systems with the same money that wasn't enough to fund one. Not that I expect any choicers to say so out loud. But no school district (or any other business) responds to tough money times by saying, "I know-- let's build more facilities." The inevitable side effect of choice systems is that taxpayers end up financing redundant facilities and vast amounts of excess capacity, which means taxpayers have to be hit for even more money. Legislators continue to find creative ways to A) ignore the issue and B) legislate more paths by which taxpayer money can be funneled to choice schools.

This bill hasn't died yet. Tell your Congressperson to drive a stake through its heart.