Duncan's Magical One Size Fits All Test Unicorn

One of the central tenets of Arne Duncan's edu-amateur structure of beliefs is that Low Expectations Are Bad. This has led him to the corollary that special education, adaptations, modified curriculum, and specially altered assessments are all bad things, that special ed is a morass of perfectly capable students who have been shunted into learning support programs because of race or misbehavior or any number of reasons. Once in special ed, these students go into academic free fall because they are surrounded by teachers who expect them to do poorly.

Like much that comes out of Duncan, this is not 100% baloney. If we're honest, we all know stories of students who ended up labeled special needs for every reason from being a behavior problem to having insistent parents-- but not actually needing a Learning Support label.

But Duncan's continues suggesting that the entire system of structures, rules, and pedagogy that has sprung up a some sort of complex dodge, a bizarre lie perpetuated as a way to keep students, selected almost at random, held back and stomped down. This is just... weird. One would think that in all his years in Chicago, he would have met at least one student who struggled with the difficulties of a disability that truly rendered her unable to achieve at the same level and pace of her fellow students.

We've seen Arne argue that all students with disabilities just need teachers who expect them to do well. We've watched him struggle through a grilling about USED's (non-existent) policy for helping students with dyslexia.

Well, here comes the latest USED pronouncement on the subject: Improving the Academic Achievement of the Disadvantaged; Assistance to States for the Education of Children with Disabilities, a rule that is supposed to take effect in about a month.

The rule is laced with the now-usual Department of Education balderdash. Let's open with this:

High standards and high expectations for all students and an accountability system that provides teachers, parents, students, and the public with information about students' academic progress are essential to ensure that students graduate from high school prepared for college and careers in the 21st century.

Torn between two questions here: 1) Why exactly are these things essential and 2) Is it going to be a problem that none of these things currently actually exist?

The document offers the history that way back in 2007, the feds were willing to allow modifications of standards and tests because 1) they believed "there was a small group of students whose disabilities precluded them from achieving grade-level proficiency" and who would take longer to get there and because 2) the regular state assessment was too hard.

But now it's 2015, and the feds believe that 1) newer research shows that "students with disabilities who struggle in reading and mathematics can successfully learn grade-level content and make significant academic progress when appropriate instruction, services, and supports are provided." This appears to be based mainly on meta-research, everybody's favorite sort of research. The feds also believe that 2) the new generation of tests are super-magical and can measure students of any level against all the standards.

Therefor, states should not modify tests or standards. Students with special needs should take the same tests and be accountable for the same standards-- but they should be totally successful at dealing with these things, because magic.

Any Discussion?

If none of this sounds new, it's because this rule was put up for discussion in August of 2013, with an opportunity for comments (the comment period was closed in October of that year-- about six weeks later). 156 folks shared their two cents, and the department takes some time to respond to some of those.

Some folks said, "You go, federal authorities." Using principle of "universal design of learning" and fixing accessibility issues "have eliminated the need for alternate assessments based on modified academic achievement standards." In other words, one size really does fit absolutely all! The magical testing unicorn can carry any student, whether she's 400 pounds or ten pounds or can't grip reins or is deathly afraid of unicorns.

One state-level person pointed out that their alternate assessments represented five years of time and money and actually were working quite well at helping students with disabilities have access a good education and helped teachers figure out how best to deliver quality educatin' to the students. The federal response is a mass of bureaucratic gobbledeegook that translates roughly to, "We hear what you're saying, but the new tests will be totally awesome and work great. Because, reasons."

Some parents made the point that without modifications, some students with special needs will not graduate-- can't we keep that? The feds respond with a pretty straightforward, "No, they can't do that any more." But they do note, as either a consolation or a further slap in the face, that states are required to provide a "free appropriate public education" even as the new rule will forbid it. Oh, those wacky federal rules. Put another way, IDEA and IEP's will still be required for the local school district, but under this new rule, the feds will require states to ignore both. There's a long discussion of the regs involved, but here's your bottom line:

However, under these final regulations, an IEP team may no longer select an alternate assessment based on modified academic achievement standards to assess students with disabilities under title I of the ESEA.

Some commenters argued that students with disabilities should not have lower standards because otherwise the students just fall behind-- because putting something on a test guarantees that students will master it no matter what?? But other commenters that setting students up for failure is sucky, and that "high standards" vary depending on the student ability. The department repeats its assertion that all students should be held to exactly the same standards because the only reason that students with disabilities fall behind their same-age cohort is that teachers give them easier stuff to do. Full speed ahead. Calculus for everybody.

But but but, argue some other parents and teachers-- giving students assessments that we know will be a "struggle" is just setting them up for failure. The federal response is. "We've rounded up some research that we think proves that students will do as well as you insist they do. So get in there and insist." Also, the new assessments are magical.

There's some discussion of timelines (originally the department thought this rule would come into play last year). There's some discussion of technical assistance and monitoring, which all boil down to more paperwork for state-level functionaries and the local officials they collect their data from. There's assurance that this will not affect students with "the most significant" cognitive disabilities. What actually gets your student into that particular club is not laid out, even a little.

Sigh. You get the picture. This goes on for lines and lines and lines of text, with the department occasionally dropping in pieces of crazy-making bizarro-world policy baloney such as

 The Department shares the goal that students with disabilities experience success. Removing the authority for modified academic achievement standards and an alternate assessment based on those standards furthers this goal because students with disabilities who are assessed based on grade-level academic achievement standards will receive instruction aligned with such an assessment.

So, students should succeed, and we will insure that they succeed by giving them one-size-fits-all assessments that ignore their developmental issues because we will tell you teachers to just make it happen, with unicorn horns dipped in fairy dust.

We eventually arrive as the department's assessment of the regulatory impact. Short form: they have no clue. Long form: some things, like taking high school kids who have had modified assessments their whole careers and now tossing them into the regular assessment may be hard, so we'll offer some grant money. For something? I don't know. Grants for wigs and toupees for special ed teachers who are tearing their hair out? Turns out that the impact statement doesn't cover things like "Large number of students with cognitive and developmental disabilities will now flunk and fail to graduate, become discouraged, and start looking for any kind of alternate education source."

Deep Impact

The new rule hits and hits soon, and it is going to be ugly. It is why the special ed teachers in your building are extra touchy; be extra kind to them. Meanwhile, Arne can keep riding his magical one-size-fits-all testing unicorn around the rainbow farm, secure in the knowledge that he has helped erase all cognitive and developmental difficulties in the country by simply insisting that they go away. Who knew it was so easy!

PDK Factoid Parade

The Phi Delta Kappa poll of US attitudes about education is out, and education writers are on that puppy like a lake full of carp on a loaf of bread. I'm scanning the report. It's a report that establishes PDK's bona fides right off the bat because-- well, when a pool is commissioned by somebody to prove something, it generally arrives cloaked in a cloud of obtuseness that's meant to discourage any sort of examination. "Just take our word for it," the sponsors say. "The poll shows that school choice cures cancer and reverse male pattern baldness." But PDK's published poll results are perfectly accessible to ordinary civilians. Almost like they're not trying to hide anything.

So what did I learn?

How You Ask Matters

Okay, here's a thing I totally did not know, found in the introduction and straight from Gallup methodologist Stephanie Kafka:

“When a respondent sees response categories visually, they’re much more likely to gravitate toward the middle,” Kafka said. “When they hear the same items, they’re more likely to latch on to the ends.”

So, that's interesting. Also, "Stephanie Kafka" would be a great name for a gumshoe detective, so Kafka might want to consider a career change.

It's the Money, Stupid

Americans of all types, shapes and sizes agree that the biggest problem facing their local schools. This is not a new result, but I find it interesting because politicians and policy-makers generally consider this the last item on their list of solutions to try working.


Too Much Testing, And Test Fans Should Be Worried

Speaking of seeming contradictions, the public overwhelmingly agrees that there is too much emphasis on standardized testing in their local schools (64% overall). Among the subgroups, Democrats lead the pack at 71% saying "too much" which creates an interesting conundrum for the reformster alleged Democrats like Andy Cuomo, Arne Duncan, and the fine folks at CAP (who swear they're left-leaning Dems even though the evidence is so thin that not even PI Stephanie Kafka could find it).

At the same time, support for opt-out is not as deep. 41% says it's okay, 44% say it's not, and 16% don't know. But if support is not deep for opting out, it's certainly not deep enough for taking the test. And the really bad news for test manufacturers and reformsters is that among school parents, the numbers are 47% say opt-out is okay and only 40% say no. If 47% of parents were actually to opt their students out of the Big Standardized Test, that would be game over for the test-and-punish policies.

Asked if they would actually opt their child out, 31% of parents said yes. That is enough to bring the whole testing juggernaut to a halt. But here's a weird one-- the percentage of actual opt-outers is higher among GOP responders (34%) than among Dems (26%). Lowest group-- black parents, with 21%.

No Love for Tests Themselves

Pretty much nobody thinks that the BS Tests give us a good picture of how well a school is doing. Again, while only 14% thought BS Tests were a good measure, 28% of black responders thought so.

It didn't matter how the pollsters went looking for test love. Best way to tell student progress? Best way to improve a school? BS Tests came in dead last every time. And only a sliver of folks thought that having test that could let you compare your own child to children in other states (which is a good thing, because that kind of intra-state comparison is something that we totally can't do).

Teacher Evaluation Surprise

Reformsters repeatedly tell us that there is strong support for the idea of evaluating teachers based on what their students learn, and I believe that-- stated that way-- it's an idea that does have broad support. But PDK asked the real question-- should teacher evaluation be linked to student test scores.

More folks opposed that than favored it. I wouldn't call it a a landslide (55-43), but it was still a pleasant surprise.

Thanks for Playing, Common Core

Yes, increasingly folks agree that it's time to hand Common Core a case of Rice-A-Roni and send it on its way. Continuing the trend from the past couple of years, people know more about CCSS and like the standards less. At the same time, very few folks think their school's standards are too high.

The short form here is that despite the heavy marketing of reformsters, folks still don't see Common Core Standards as high standards so much as they see the Core as bad standards.

Also, only about 12% first heard about Common Core through social media. So much for the transformative power of blogging.

The Disconnect About Charters

Well, we have some work to do. Folks overwhelmingly support "the idea of charter schools," with a 10% rise of support among parents. They also support the idea of being able to go to any public school, even outside the neighborhood. (A large percentage, however, don't believe they know enough to make the choice.)

I wish that PDK had asked the question, "Would you support the idea of school choice if it meant that it would take money away from your local----" Oh, hell. I don't know how you boil that complicated question down into a polling item.

But we have the next best thing, because they did ask if it would be okay for students to attend private schools at public expense, and opposition to THAT was overwhelming.

What that tells me is that the public doesn't understand how choice and charters work, and that the effort to brand charters as "public" schools was both smart and effective. Because our current charter choice system is nothing but students attending private schools at public expense, but with enough smoke and mirrors that the public doesn't get it. Remember the number one problem for the local school? That would be having enough money. And every student who leaves a public school takes a chunk of money off to a charter to fatten someone's bank account and leave the public school poorer. Well, you know the deal. but the public by and large clearly does not.

This would be the point on which we're losing the argument against privatization.

Local Is Best

As always, everybody thinks their local school is better than the nation's schools. As always, my explanation is that people have direct experience of their local school, but most of what they know about the nation's schools is the media beat-down that public education constantly takes.

WTF, Democrats??!

Towards the back we get to other fun opiniony questions, like what would make the most difference (money) or what grade Obama gets for education (B's or C's depending on the party). Then we get to who should be running schools.

People mostly think state or local government should be running schools. But one of the specific questions asked which level should be "deciding which textbooks and teaching methods should be used."

33% of Democrats said the federal government. 33%!!! Someone in DC, some bureaucrat being heavily lobbied by Pearson et al, should decide which textbook I should use, or how I should teach??!! I am going to interpret this data as "33% of Democrats have lost their damn minds." I do not know what possessed them, or where their missing brain parts went, but I will gladly hire PI Stephanie Kafka to work on the case.

ICYMI: Good Edureads from the Week

I really thought I was going to fumble the ball this week. A combination of working the second weekend of our production of The Fantasticks, beginning-of-year in-service days, ninth grade orientation, organizing a 5K race, etc etc etc-- well, I got a bit behind on my own reading. But yesterday and today I stumbled over several must-reads for the week. I know it's a little late in the day (matinee and set strike), but here's some Sunday evening reading for you--

The Blackout

Jose Luis Vilson gives some articulate clarity to the questions raised by supporters of public schools who really think that black folks should stop pestering Presidential candidates and start getting with the right team.

Left Behind

Here's your if-you-only-read-one-thing selection for the week. This fully-researched series of articles looks at exactly how school choice plays out, and how it leaves the most challenged students behind in a half-empty school stripped of the resources they desperately need. The journalists here take a close-up look at North Charleston High in South Carolina, and the story is thorough, from individual student stories to some very handy interactive graphics that help the reader understand exactly what is happening. A well-told, fully-supported story of the worst side-effects of choice.

The Reality Television Paradigm of All Charter Systems 

Sarah Tepper Blaine takes a look at the implications of a system like New Orleans means to our system of public education, and for students on the losing end of a two tier system.

The Myth of the New Orleans Makeover 

Well, lookee here! The New York Times runs yet another criticism of the New Orleans sort-of-a-miracle.

Finally, google Dyett High Hunger Strike

and read whatever you can find that's the most current account of what's going on in the struggle for Dyett High parents to make their voices heard. If nothing else, check this link for the newest updates there. Spread the word.

As a bonus this week, I suggest that you read all five of the suggestions, because taken together, they suggest the outlines of the larger picture that's showing its iceberg head above the education waters.

Dyett High Hunger Strike: Things To Know

Today, the twelve parents engaged in a hunger strike in support of Dyett High School in the Chicago southside neighborhood of Bronzeville are marking their first full week of their action. Here are some things to know.

What Is This About?

In 2012, Chicago Public Schools decided to close Dyett, allowing the last freshman class to finish their education there if they wished. Only a handful wished (and they were reportedly pressured by CPS to wish differently), but they're done, and the time has come to decide what Dyett will become.

There are three proposals out there.

First, an arts and design academy to be run by Little Black Pearl, an arts group that has shown no particular expertise in running charter schools. I would provide a link, but for whatever reason, all attempts to get to littleblackpearl.org a 403 forbidden message. Second, an athletics-based school backed by Dyett principal Charles Campbell. The Sun-Times also links a Mark Coleman to the proposal as a guy who runs a nonprofit, but I can't find anything about him. I can, however, find a Mark Coleman who runs a media company that specializes in lining up financing for big projects-- that Mark Coleman lists Barack Obama and Ari Emmanuel as his "influencers," but that could be some other Mark Coleman. The athletics school proposal came in after the CPS deadline for proposals.

The third proposal, the Dyett Global Leadership and Green Technology High School, came from the community itself, early and complete with a partnership with DuSable University, Chicago Botanical Gardens and others. You can read the whole proposal here.

(Nobody, it should be noted, is proposing a group of robust charters so that the people of Bronzeville can have many excellent local choices.)

Um, Wait a Minute

In a poor, black neighborhood of Chicago, there's an outside proposal for entertainment industry, an outside proposal for sports, and a community proposal for science, technology and leadership. I respect athletics, and you know I love the arts, but you tell me which one of these proposals sets the highest aspirations for the children of this community.

Bronzeville is poor, but they have worked hard for their school (back in 2011, just before the district dropped the hammer, they won a grant from ESPN to rebuild their athletic facilities with big fancy upgrades like working handles for doors). They were improving and growing stronger. There's no question they needed some help, but a search doesn't turn up stories suggesting that Dyett was some sort of notorious hellhole in freefall.

So, What's Really Going On

Well, Dyett is located in the northern end of Washington Park, a very desirable chunk of real estate that is one of the two locations in the running to be the location of Barack Obama's Presidential Library. In fact, the proposed location is within a stone's throw of Dyett.

In fact, Washington Park seems to have been in the crosshairs for many years. Back in 2008, when Chicago was feeling the Olympic love, Washington Park was called one of the hottest neighborhoods, a diamond in the rough, and there is still talk about turning it into a community that could attract and support business, arts, and all the trappings of gentrification. And gentrification is a concern in Bronzeville, just as many see it as a hallmark of Rahm Emanuel's tenure as mayor.

But What Is Actually Happening?

CPS is stalling. There were going to be meetings and hearings to settle this decision. They were going to happen this summer, but finally were pushed back all the way out of August into September because-- well, I can't even say "because reason." Just because. The hunger strikers would like the school district to do the right thing, and it's pretty clear that doing nothing while waiting for the community to stop paying attention just isn't going to work.


Why Don't I Know About Any of This

If you google "Dyett hunger strike Chicago Tribune," the only thing you'll see about Chicago's major media outlet is comments about how it's not covering this at all.

Rather than rail about corrupt and incompetent media, I want to just make an observation here. Because you know what would get the Dyett parents in the media? If they blew something up or set something on fire or took some sort of violent, disruptive action that resulted in a few vanloads of police showing up.

That would be followed by a bunch of handwringing and concern trolling and tone policing and people saying, "Well, I understand they're upset, but if black folks want to be taken seriously and earn a hearing for their concerns, they need to be more reasonable and proper in their tone. They need to work within the system. They need to not be so disruptive and take such a confrontational tone. They're just hurting their own cause. I might have been sympathetic if they hadn't resorted to such unseemly behavior."

The parents of Dyett have done it all by the book. They developed their own proposals and presented them. They have petitioned and remonstrated. They have been ignored.

And this is what is most striking to me-- rather than take action against property or other people, the parents of Dyett are taking action against themselves. They are committing a slow-motion act of violence against themselves.

They have approached this exactly as people who complain about protests and civil disobedience and civil disruption say they want, and what do the parents of Dyett get for their carefully calibrated and heart-wrenching action? What they get is an indifferent media and a public that doesn't pay attention because someone who's slowly starving just isn't very exciting.

So everybody who complained about things like the acting out in Fergusson and the other protests that have popped up in the news over the last year, everybody who said, "You know, I think they have a real point and these issues of racial inequity really bother me, but I can't support such destructive misbehavior"-- here's your chance to put up or shut up. You can support the parents of Dyett in their quiet measured stand against the silencing of community members, the suspension of democracy, the trampling of people in a community just because they're black and they're poor and they don't have rich and powerful friends to help them in city hall, or you can admit you just don't give a rat's rear about any of that, and you can admit that non-wealthy non-white folks in this country have little choice except to be loud and rude and disruptive in this country. In either case, I don't want to hear concern trolling and tone policing out of you ever again.

Dyett Is Bigger Than Chicago

Dyett is everything that reformsters say they want-- an engaged and energized community that has shown a willingness to do the bootstrappy work needed to turn their own school, guided by their vision of they want for their children. Their vision is big and global and challenging and loaded with high standards, as well as a vision of using the school to anchor a rising and advancing of their entire community. If reformsters aren't going to speak up for the community and public school in this situation, they never will.

The Dyett hunger strike isn't just about the future of Bronzeville and the fate of the last of the open-enrollment public schools in the area. It's about reformsters being caught in their lies, about being given what they said they wanted and finding an excuse to turn it down so that they can do what they actually wanted all along-- profiteering and a charter system that strips democracy from Those People while busting up their neighborhood. Without a national change in course, sooner or later, all of us will be in Dyett's shoes.

For More Information

This site will lead you to most of the important up-to-date resources. Teachers for Social Justice also has an eye on things. Anthony Cody's Living in Dialogue has been paying attention. And the following clip presents more insight from Jitu Brown and Pauline Lippman-- it's a good quick summary to send to your friends who aren't so into the whole reading thing.



Send support. Spread the word.

CAP--*^Y(FLJVKICukvkctjy!!

It was just last week that I warned that I was running out of headline variations on "CAP tries to promote a stupid Common Core idea that nobody has seriously tried to sell for years." But the Center for American Progress just keeps driving that baloney truck around the block again and again.

And last Thursday, there they were again. This time it was Lisette Partelow (director of teacher policy) in the pages of US New in their feature called Knowledge Bank.

Common Core doomsayers often claim that rich, engaging, curiosity-inspiring lessons are a thing of the past. But, as a former teacher, I'm tired of Common Core critics claiming that the standards somehow inhibit teacher creativity. It's simply not true.

First of all, as you have already guessed, Partelow's "former teacher" status is based on her two years of Teach for America experience (2012-2014). She actually did the TFA thing well after graduating college. She got her BA in Psychology from Connecticut College in 2003, and went straight to work for American Institutes for Research, the test manufacturers who sometimes go toe-to-toe with Pearson. She spent six or seven years working as a Congressional staffer and research assistant, then TFAed her way into a DC first grade temp position before landing a policy gig with CAP. In short, she's not really a former teacher.

But back to her defense of the Core.

Although the Core is swell, its detractors are "winning the public relations battle that they themselves manufactured," because as we know, all objections to Common Core are simply PR ploys and not an expression of real objections by real humans who know what they're talking about. She'll pair that old chestnut up with "people like high standards and great schools, so ipso factoid they MUST love the Common Core, just not by name."

Contrary to popular perception, Common Core was designed to be less prescriptive than many states' previous standards. 

So, popular perception is just deluded. When, for instance, the Core says that the way to write a narrative is this:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.11-12.3.a
Engage and orient the reader by setting out a problem, situation, or observation and its significance, establishing one or multiple point(s) of view, and introducing a narrator and/or characters; create a smooth progression of experiences or events.

That's not prescriptive? David Coleman's insistence that literature must be understood only by using what appears within the four corners of the text-- that's not prescriptive? And the Core's inherent emptiness, which Partelow presents as a strength (the Core doesn't tell you what texts to include)-- that insistence on structuring around a set of prescribed skills, which in turn implies that texts and literature have no value, but exist simply as a bucket in which to carry the important part, the required skills-- that's not prescriptive in any way?

Like the rules or regulations that provide direction to other professions, rigorous standards provide a loose guide for teachers to follow, while still allowing teachers ample room for creativity in how they develop and execute their daily lessons. 

You can read your script wearing a tie or wearing a skirt. You can cover the Core-aligned lessons with your hair parted in the right or on the left. The classroom teacher is free to make any number of choices-- just not any of the major ones.

Partelow trots out some other old standards of the genre, including a teacher (one who won the Fishman Prize from TNTP, TFA's sister organization) who says that "she believes Common Core allows for creativity in the classroom while ensuring that students are supported by better, more rigorous standards that encourage deeper levels of understanding." Which is a pretty thing to say, although I have yet to hear an explanation of how, exactly, standards encourage deep thinking-- especially Core standards which have nothing to say about deep thinking, but focus on compliance.

But Partelow goes on to follow pattern of all those essays we read a year or two ago and offers some concrete examples of great teaching ideas and lessons that any teacher worthy of the name already knew to do before the Core was even a distant twinkle in Bill Gates' eye.

Partelow does not even recognize that CCSS has lead to straightjacketed lockstep creativity-free teaching throughout the country, not even in order to blame it one somebody else. Meanwhile, CCSS and its testing program drive schools to get "aligned" materials and follow them blindly. Of course, most reformsters didn't start that game until mid-2014. CAP is stuck in 2013.

Meanwhile, I am wondering what's going on at CAP. This is the fourth article this month in which they recycle stale Common Core talking points from late 2013. Are they in fact recycling, trying to create more environmentally responsible thinky tank effluvium? Are they executing an elaborate piece of performance art and presenting themselves as living nostalgia for the recent past? Did they hire a completely new staff that is now redoing the old crew's work? Did CAP have a stroke?

Whatever the case, they need to stop. How can we take anyone seriously who pretends that a couple of year's worth of discussion and debate and debunking never happened. At the very least, CAP needs to move on to points that we don't already know simply aren't true.

Are You Ready?

It is one of my least favorite questions, particularly when asked in that tone of voice that says, "I'll bet you just hate the idea of stepping back into a classroom. Please tell me how much you hate your job."

I can't think of any other profession that so relentlessly gets the "Don't you just hate to go to work" question. Do people ask doctors, "Boy, all those sick people in your office. What a pain? Amiright?" Do people tell sports stars, "Boy, I bet you're disappointed you made the playoffs and have to keep working."

We're supposed to respond with some version of weary sadness, bonding with the interogator over the shared understanding that, yes, I am sad about having to do my job and he can walk away shaking his head knowingly-- those poor damn teachers, stuck in their stinky jobs.

I can remember as a young teacher feeling kind of sheepish about trying to answer the question, sensing that my answer was not the expected one and yet not seeing a clear way to answer without it being a slap in the face to the person who asked. As regular readers may have noticed, I'm not quite as reluctant to be an ass as I once was. I mean, I understand that people mean well, sort of, and that they are just adopting a socially acceptable avenue of small talk to make conversation, and perhaps that's part of what bugs me about it-- the embedded cultural assumption that of course teachers find their job troublesome and not-look-forwardable-to. Nowadays, mostly, I settle on answering the question as if it were delivered without any subtext-- "Why, yes, I'm looking forward to it," or "Yup, it never gets old. I'm excited to get to it," or "Been getting ready all summer," or "I was born ready." Occasionally, either for people I know can stand it (or people I know can't), "Well, I haven't finished updating the early American lit reading list, and wanted to read through a few more works before heading back, and I was hoping to tweak the materials on verbal phrases because my students always have trouble with nominative absolutes." Only rarely, "Well, of course I'm ready. It's the job I've devoted my entire adult life to, the job I always wanted to do, the job I try really hard to get better at with every passing year. Why wouldn't I be ready?" The word "dumbass" is only implied.

I do know one group that gets a similar subliminal downgrade; all the mothers who are currently being asked how happy they are to get their children out of their houses and back to school. So perhaps the cultural message here is that dealing with children is unpleasant.

Of course, children themselves get their own version of the Are You Ready onslaught. We often puzzle at how small children are so excited about school and older ones are not. I'd suggest that part of the problem is that we keep telling children they shouldn't be excited about school. Not directly, of course, but right now all over the country students are being asked just how sad they are about the end of summer and the start of school.

Just imagine the effect if every single adult that a child encountered in August said some version, "Boy, I bet you're excited to get back to school! Won't it be great? What do you think is going to be the best part? Man, I wish I were your age again and going to school!"

Instead, students keep getting nudges, knowing frowns, and versions of, "Sucks, huh?"

Look, I get that the freedom of vacation is nice and recharging the batteries is useful and both are hard to give up.  But this negative talk about school is pervasive and, because it's more subtle than the "Teachers are destroying education" rhetoric, easier to miss and harder to resist. And yes, there's some stress because there always unknowns-- but the stress is because we want to do well, because we care about the job.

But if we teachers are serious about improving the atmosphere around our work and our schools, it is an easy-- but important-- first step to stop participating in the "Oh, going back to school sucks and should make us sad" party. If you love your job and you're proud of the work and you are happy to get back to your classroom, don't be peer pressure pretending otherwise. Smile. Hold your chin up. Say, "It's great, important work and I'm happy to be employed doing it." Don't apologize, even through silence, for being a teacher. Resolve to make this simple stand for the profession. You know the questions and the comments.

Be ready.

Hillary's Teacher PAC, Part II

You may recall that back at the beginning of the summer, a group calling themselves America's Teachers cropped up as a PAC supporting Hillary Clinton. I did a little websurfing to see what I could find and wrote about the results.

The brain behind the PAC is a young man named Naveed Amalfard, who is the PAC's national chairman, a 2014 graduate of Emory University, and a Teach for America guy about to start his second year as a math teacher in DC. My piece about America's Teachers did not makes his day, and the drubbing some folks tried to give him on twitter made his day even less, and so he reached out to me, and this afternoon, we both took a break from beginning-of-year preparations to have a phone chat.

And so I'm prepared to answer the question-- is America's Teachers more nefarious dark money political shenanigans, or something else?

Amalfard seems like a pleasant guy, and I opened by giving him the chance to respond to the piece I wrote. He said that they (he used the word "we" throughout) were surprised to see an attack on their organization, and were particularly unhappy to find themselves linked to DFER and CAP and other Naught Persons and generally marked as negative for reasons they don't feel are merited. This prompted them to want to start a dialogue, and I readily admit that their impulse seems healthier than, say, an impulse to simply assassinate my character in their own space.

Amalfard has fine-tuned his message and mission. From the five points originally listed, AT now stands heavily for universal pre-school, college affordability, and post-secondary schooling for Dreamers. Amalfard circled back around to these three points many times. This is what they want.

I allowed as how since their original appearance, I had had trouble deciding whether they were a skullduggerous front for More Big Money or just one guy with a dream. Amalfard allowed as how they were two guys with a dream-- America's Teacher has a co-founder named Luke Villalobos. And they were animated by a dream for their students. And Amalfard told a story about watching a student get into a great college and then watching that college not provide the financial assistance to make it possible for her to attend.

On AT's blog, Amalfard comes across with the innocent arrogance of youth, the kind that announces that after one whole year of teaching, he Understands It All and will now illuminate the rest of us. On the phone, he was much less so-- not terribly slick and fairly unassuming. He's a good AFT affiliate union member who, he says, was asked to be a building rep but turned it down because he has his hands full with his job. He has enormous respect for his experienced peers and gets advice from them. I know this sounds sarcastic when I type it, but he sounded as if he meant it. Also-- and I mean this in the very best way-- he was often kind of stumbly and inarticulate in the course of our conversation, in the kind of way that suggests he's not some kind of slicker with a smooth line and a greased-up bullshit delivery system.

After the sixty gazillionth time he hammered on the Big Three Concerns of the PAC, I asked if this meant they had shifted support from Hillary to the Big Three Concerns, and the answer is that they most of all love the Big Three, but they believe that Hillary is the only candidate who can get elected and make them happen. "We think she is a champion for education," he said, and I was trying not to be an absolute ass, so I just pointed out some of the reasons that many people did not agree with him. Still. My union endorsed her, he said. Yes, and many of your union members aren't very happy about it, I said.

I asked the money question. Where does your funding come from. He said that they are going to take (those were his words-- "going to take") money from anybody anywhere on the political spectrum who would support the Big Three Concerns, and they "are not budging from them."

I asked what about Bernie Sanders. He said, "I like him. He's a great guy. A fighter. But when we look at who can get the job done..." and we were back to Hillary. Sanders is a serious opponent, not to be taken lightly, but when it comes to experience and credibility and being ready to be President, Amalfard loves Clinton very much.

Then, knowing I was talking to a Teach for America guy, I was a little bit of an asshat. "Where do you see yourself in ten years," I asked. Amalfard hemmed a bit and said that it would be really presumptuous of him to try to predict that.

"Well," I asked. "Do you see yourself in a classroom?"

"I surely am considering it," he said. When he thinks about the students and what they need, he knows it would be hard to leave. And as the product of an immigrant family, he really feels the issues of educational inequality. That, he thinks, is the most important advocacy work.

I noted at points in our conversation that declaring yourself the representative for the nation's teachers based on the insights you've gained in your one year in Teach for America might raise some people's eyebrows, particularly when you do it in support of a candidate who is not universally seen as public education friendly, might just get you some pushback. He did not try to 'splain why I was wrong, but just said, "I hear you."

Does this twenty-three-year-old have any kind of track record? Well, while at Emory he launched Readers Beyond Borders, an initiative that raised some money (Amalfard made some phone calls back to his hometown in Georgia and raised $19K in three weeks) which put six Kenyan students through college. One is now a post-grad fellow and heard President Obama speak on his African tour.

Is America's Teachers actually making a dent? Well, their twitter account has over 4,400 followers (better than certain C-list bloggers) despite having done fewer than 200 tweets. On the other hand, nobody seems to be talking about them on twitter. They apparently not on facebook, and they don't rise very far on a google search. A few weeks ago they issued a press release about Christie's ridiculous interest in punching the teachers' union, and it doesn't appear to have been picked up by anybody at all.

So if I had to make a judgment (and I don't, but as always, I will anyway), I'd say that America's Teachers PAC is more about youthful naive exuberance, one more monument to how anyone with a little ambition and an internet connection can try to grab a turn on the Big Stage, whether they have a complex and nuanced understanding of what's happening on that stage or not. Perhaps these guys will actually create a giant ship of money collected from all sorts of political enemies that will be used to float President H. Clinton into the universal preschool port. Or maybe he's a deeply gifted actor who managed to pull over my eyes and is yucking it up right now with champagne-swilling Masters of the Universe. But I don't think so. For right now, I'm going to call America's Teacher a couple of relatively harmless youngsters with an improbable under-researched dream.