Every top-down educational reform initiative has them-- barnacles.
Barnacles are the little extras, the additional clumps of junk that cling to the original body of the Brilliant Idea. When dealing with these reform movements, it's useful to be able to tell the difference between the barnacle and the ship. To that end, consider the three ways in which the barnacles become attached.
1: Fill in the Blanks.
The initiative originates in some bureaucratic office or in the halls of the legislature. Because it has been created so far from the actual place where rubber and road start their renowned blind dae, it is filled with giant gaping holes. But it still has to be implemented, so the process begins of passing it down through layers of bureaucracy.
So High Level Bureaucrat delivers the new program. "Students should eat food."
Mid-level bureaucrat finds this inconclusive, so she asks, "Well, what kind of food?"
HLB doesn't really know, so he just makes his best guess. "I don't know. Dairy food. Students should eat dairy food."
MLB heads off to his own meeting to pass on the Wisdom from the Top. "Students are to eat dairy food."
But now we're getting closer to the level where someone will actually have to make this happen, so they need details. "What kind of dairy food? And how often?"
Pass down through a few more levels and you will find teachers at the in-service where a consultant is telling them, "The new law requires your students to eat Swiss cheese every day for breakfast."
2: My Favorite Things
This starts out as #1 did, but along the way it meets bureaucrats or consultants or college profs or businessmen with an agenda.
"Eat food??!!" this person thinks. "I have always-- deeply believed/had a pet theory/figured I could make a big profit if-- every student were to eat a hamburger with a slice of tomato on it. That would fit perfectly with this new program. I'm just going to graft my pet project right onto this baby and present it as if it had always been built right into this reform movement."
3: Branding, Baby
Remember when HD was the big new things, and marketeers started just slapping "HD" on everything in sight?
We had HD tv's and disc players, but we also had HD radios and rear-view-mirrors and key chains and dog food. In the fifties it was "atomic."
The principle is simple-- you just take whatever merchandise you need to move and slapped that hot new buzz-word on it, and bang! zoom! the goods are flying out and the money is flying in.
Why Do We Care?
CCSS is absolutely covered in barnacles.
Sometimes, when the ship is worth sailing, we need to knock the barnacles off so we can free the vessel.
But CCSS is a boat that can't float. It needs to have giant holes busted through its bow and its anchor cut off and [insert your own extension of my labored boat metaphor here]. And that's why it's important that we don't waste our time attacking the barnacles.
When the tin hat crowd gets up in arms because they've found commie agitprop in second-grade readers, they're attacking barnacles. When we get agitated about opportunistic malarkey like deep reading, we're swinging at barnacles.
It's not that the barnacles deserve to live. They never do. We just have to make sure that we don't let them distract us from the real monstrosity that is CCSS.
Friday, November 8, 2013
CCSS: Taking a Deep Breath
Those of us who spend a lot of time writing and venting and raging and grumbling about the CCSS need to occasionally step back, take a breath, and remember one hugely important thing--
What the CCSS says doesn't really matter.
One of the many things that hasn't changed a bit in the transition from Bush's NCLB to Obama's RttT is one of the worst things-- the absolute reliance on testing as the measure of education, schools, teachers, bus drivers, school lunches and, presumably, the people who paint the parking spaces in the school parking lot. It's testing all the way. High stakes test that collect very little real data, filtered through really shiny software that makes all those beautiful, beautiful data digits glow and sparkle.
Testing is king, and testing will, as always, focus on the things that it can measure, or at least pretend to measure. And that means that big chunks of CCSS will never, ever be tested.
The kind of skills required to read and entire novel, synthesizing the ways in which the author uses character development and other literary techniques to create thematic unity over the course of an entire work? Forget that. We'll still read brief excerpts and bubble in some quick one-answer questions.
The PA version of the core standards includes some lovely language about collaboration. I find the idea of a standardized test that involves collaboration kind of entertaining, but that's never going to happen.
Eventually, states will produce some nice jargon (we used to like "assessment anchors" in PA) that will really mean "the only part of the standards that will be on the test." And then we will all grab our carefully-produced-by-Pearson instructional materials and hone in on those parts of the CCSS with lazer-like test-prep precision.
The rest of the CCSS, even the parts that prompted so much angst and chest-thumping and impassioned argument-- they will be no more important than your appendix, and like your school's arts program, they will fall by the wayside, ignored because they fail the most important test question in the world of corporate education reform-- Is it on the test?
Bottom line? There are parts of the core that just aren't ever going to matter. We can save our energy for other things, like fighting the culture of big tests and little data.
What the CCSS says doesn't really matter.
One of the many things that hasn't changed a bit in the transition from Bush's NCLB to Obama's RttT is one of the worst things-- the absolute reliance on testing as the measure of education, schools, teachers, bus drivers, school lunches and, presumably, the people who paint the parking spaces in the school parking lot. It's testing all the way. High stakes test that collect very little real data, filtered through really shiny software that makes all those beautiful, beautiful data digits glow and sparkle.
Testing is king, and testing will, as always, focus on the things that it can measure, or at least pretend to measure. And that means that big chunks of CCSS will never, ever be tested.
The kind of skills required to read and entire novel, synthesizing the ways in which the author uses character development and other literary techniques to create thematic unity over the course of an entire work? Forget that. We'll still read brief excerpts and bubble in some quick one-answer questions.
The PA version of the core standards includes some lovely language about collaboration. I find the idea of a standardized test that involves collaboration kind of entertaining, but that's never going to happen.
Eventually, states will produce some nice jargon (we used to like "assessment anchors" in PA) that will really mean "the only part of the standards that will be on the test." And then we will all grab our carefully-produced-by-Pearson instructional materials and hone in on those parts of the CCSS with lazer-like test-prep precision.
The rest of the CCSS, even the parts that prompted so much angst and chest-thumping and impassioned argument-- they will be no more important than your appendix, and like your school's arts program, they will fall by the wayside, ignored because they fail the most important test question in the world of corporate education reform-- Is it on the test?
Bottom line? There are parts of the core that just aren't ever going to matter. We can save our energy for other things, like fighting the culture of big tests and little data.
Monday, November 4, 2013
That Damn Tenure
We've all heard it. "People in other jobs don't have tenure. Why should teachers be any different?"
There are three parts to my answer.
The first part you can already write yourself. Tenure is not "a guaranteed job for life." It is not a get-out-of-anything-free card for every bad teacher out there. It is a promise of due process. It is a promise that I won't be fired because I gave the wrong kid a bad grade, benched the wrong kid in a sport, refused to go out with a board member, reported an administrator for a contract violation, dug in my heels over a professional matter, or belong to the wrong political party.
Behind every bad teacher who didn't get fired, there is an administrator not doing his job. Tenure should not protect the worst examples of people passing themselves off as teachers, and the rest of us don't want it to. Seriously. You know who suffers worst from an incompetent in a teacher's job-- okay, second worst, behind the students-- the people who have to work with him. We will be happy to see Mr. McBubblebrain out the door. We just want to see it happen by the book.
But everyone already knows that argument, and it won't get us past "Other people work without that kind of protection, so why should teachers?"
Well, first, you must remember that teachers don't have to be teachers. I think lots of folks forget that, perhaps because we identify ourselves as teachers, and so they assume we can't do something else. But we can. Teachers don't have to be teachers. Schools do have to work to recruit and retain (just like businesses). "We will pay you mediocre wages, we will give you little autonomy, and we will treat you like a child," make a bad start for recruiting. Throwing in, "AND we will give you no job security at all" does not make for a winning pitch.
This is one of the stupidest things that management overlooks. You can't get the best for free, but you can get them by adding things that don't cost you a cent. A promise of due process is dirt cheap.
And second, the formula cited above is a disservice not just to teachers, but to everybody else. It assumes that those other people are getting no more than they deserve.
So I submit that the whole statement is backwards. Here's what we should be asking:
"Teachers work with the assurance they will not be fired for foolish and arbitrary reasons, so why shouldn't everybody else?"
There are three parts to my answer.
The first part you can already write yourself. Tenure is not "a guaranteed job for life." It is not a get-out-of-anything-free card for every bad teacher out there. It is a promise of due process. It is a promise that I won't be fired because I gave the wrong kid a bad grade, benched the wrong kid in a sport, refused to go out with a board member, reported an administrator for a contract violation, dug in my heels over a professional matter, or belong to the wrong political party.
Behind every bad teacher who didn't get fired, there is an administrator not doing his job. Tenure should not protect the worst examples of people passing themselves off as teachers, and the rest of us don't want it to. Seriously. You know who suffers worst from an incompetent in a teacher's job-- okay, second worst, behind the students-- the people who have to work with him. We will be happy to see Mr. McBubblebrain out the door. We just want to see it happen by the book.
But everyone already knows that argument, and it won't get us past "Other people work without that kind of protection, so why should teachers?"
Well, first, you must remember that teachers don't have to be teachers. I think lots of folks forget that, perhaps because we identify ourselves as teachers, and so they assume we can't do something else. But we can. Teachers don't have to be teachers. Schools do have to work to recruit and retain (just like businesses). "We will pay you mediocre wages, we will give you little autonomy, and we will treat you like a child," make a bad start for recruiting. Throwing in, "AND we will give you no job security at all" does not make for a winning pitch.
This is one of the stupidest things that management overlooks. You can't get the best for free, but you can get them by adding things that don't cost you a cent. A promise of due process is dirt cheap.
And second, the formula cited above is a disservice not just to teachers, but to everybody else. It assumes that those other people are getting no more than they deserve.
So I submit that the whole statement is backwards. Here's what we should be asking:
"Teachers work with the assurance they will not be fired for foolish and arbitrary reasons, so why shouldn't everybody else?"
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Missing Links
There are multiple missing connections in the world of school reform.
For instance, where's the research indicating the correlation between test scores and... well, anything at all.
CCSS is necessary because we need to raise test scores to be globally competitive, because the leading scorers in the world are places like Finland and Singapore, and we need to catch up with Finland and Singapore because they lead the world in.... what, exactly?
Is the argument supposed to be that we want to remain a top tier world power, and to do that we're going to have to bump Singapore out of the way? We must run scared because Singapore is nipping at our heels? Exactly what about Singapore and Finland make us want to copy their test scores other than their test scores?
And what about those test scores, anyway?
Where is the research that correlates test scores with anything? We've been doing the high stakes testing for a while now under NCLB. Surely there must be some research that shows that Pennsylvania students who scored well on the PSSA tests have grown up to have better-paying jobs, or achieve more successful careers, or marry more attractive people, or live happier lives, or be better citizens, or have better relationships, or take better pictures?
Where is anything in the world to show that the higher test scores we are chasing are indicative of anything except higher test scores?
For instance, where's the research indicating the correlation between test scores and... well, anything at all.
CCSS is necessary because we need to raise test scores to be globally competitive, because the leading scorers in the world are places like Finland and Singapore, and we need to catch up with Finland and Singapore because they lead the world in.... what, exactly?
Is the argument supposed to be that we want to remain a top tier world power, and to do that we're going to have to bump Singapore out of the way? We must run scared because Singapore is nipping at our heels? Exactly what about Singapore and Finland make us want to copy their test scores other than their test scores?
And what about those test scores, anyway?
Where is the research that correlates test scores with anything? We've been doing the high stakes testing for a while now under NCLB. Surely there must be some research that shows that Pennsylvania students who scored well on the PSSA tests have grown up to have better-paying jobs, or achieve more successful careers, or marry more attractive people, or live happier lives, or be better citizens, or have better relationships, or take better pictures?
Where is anything in the world to show that the higher test scores we are chasing are indicative of anything except higher test scores?
Monday, October 28, 2013
Data Driven Drivel
To follow the current tempest over school reform, you would think that teachers are opposed to data. But isn't data good? And if we are going to collect data and use it to shape instruction, doesn't that make sense? If teachers don't like data-driven instruction, does that mean that they'd all rather design instruction based on oiuja boards and dowsing rods?
In fact, teachers aren't against data, and they find themselves in something of a rhetorical pickle, because on the one hand, we know that information and data are good, but on the other hand, our gut tells us that the data-driven fad is dehumanizing and bad for our students. But we have a hard time finding the right words. Let me take a shot at it.
The problem with the current data-collection fad is not that it collects too much data. It's that it doesn't collect enough.
Human beings are complicated and complex. All good teachers know that. It's why we collect data all the time. All. The. Time.
We go over a drill sheet on some simple skill. We call on students. We watch their responses. Did Johnny look puzzled or bored? Did Jane answer quickly, or do a lot of mulling? Did Ethel deliver and inspired insight or a lucky guess? Is Chris confused by the material or distracted by a fight with his best friend? Does Bob know how he got that answer, or did it come straight out his butt? We ask follow up questions, probe, watch carefully. We know there's a difference between a class that has a skill mastered and one that's just barely getting it, even if both classes get the same number of right answers.
We know all this because we collect literally thousands of data points, many of which boil down to verbal and non-verbal cues, and many of those we can interpret only because we've developed a relationship with the student. In the ten minutes it took to go over a simple worksheet, we have observed, gathered, sorted and collated thousands of data points.
These shiny new fancy data-collecting assessment whiz-bangs (available at a generous price from Pearson et al)-- how many data points do they collect?
One.
A score. A simple right or wrong number. They have to. It's all they can handle. If it's a complicated matter, they still reduce it to a fill-in-the-bubble, right-or-wrong, one-data-point number.
This is why these things are de-humanizing. Because human beings are complex creatures who generate wild and vibrant webs of complicated information, a complex of behavior so varied and stunning that the very computers that are used to analyze it cannot even begin to imitate it.
The data-driven craze is like a doctor who wants to diagnose a patient. She has available every test, every diagnostic, every lab facility in the world. But instead, she just writes down the patient's height and weight and calls it a day. Or posts it on her data wall.
We need to stop saying that we are opposed to data-driven instruction, because we're not-- we've been doing it for as long as we've been in a classroom. What we need to start saying is that the so-called data-driving tools that we're being offered (or forced) to use are crap, producing a thin sliver of useless data, a mere drop compared to the vast waterfalls of data available from the beautiful, varied human beings who are our students.
To data-driving assessment providers, we have to say, "I'm sorry that you're only capable of measuring a minute fraction of what I need to do my job. But you have to stop saying that because X is the only thing you can measure, X is the only thing that matters."
In fact, teachers aren't against data, and they find themselves in something of a rhetorical pickle, because on the one hand, we know that information and data are good, but on the other hand, our gut tells us that the data-driven fad is dehumanizing and bad for our students. But we have a hard time finding the right words. Let me take a shot at it.
The problem with the current data-collection fad is not that it collects too much data. It's that it doesn't collect enough.
Human beings are complicated and complex. All good teachers know that. It's why we collect data all the time. All. The. Time.
We go over a drill sheet on some simple skill. We call on students. We watch their responses. Did Johnny look puzzled or bored? Did Jane answer quickly, or do a lot of mulling? Did Ethel deliver and inspired insight or a lucky guess? Is Chris confused by the material or distracted by a fight with his best friend? Does Bob know how he got that answer, or did it come straight out his butt? We ask follow up questions, probe, watch carefully. We know there's a difference between a class that has a skill mastered and one that's just barely getting it, even if both classes get the same number of right answers.
We know all this because we collect literally thousands of data points, many of which boil down to verbal and non-verbal cues, and many of those we can interpret only because we've developed a relationship with the student. In the ten minutes it took to go over a simple worksheet, we have observed, gathered, sorted and collated thousands of data points.
These shiny new fancy data-collecting assessment whiz-bangs (available at a generous price from Pearson et al)-- how many data points do they collect?
One.
A score. A simple right or wrong number. They have to. It's all they can handle. If it's a complicated matter, they still reduce it to a fill-in-the-bubble, right-or-wrong, one-data-point number.
This is why these things are de-humanizing. Because human beings are complex creatures who generate wild and vibrant webs of complicated information, a complex of behavior so varied and stunning that the very computers that are used to analyze it cannot even begin to imitate it.
The data-driven craze is like a doctor who wants to diagnose a patient. She has available every test, every diagnostic, every lab facility in the world. But instead, she just writes down the patient's height and weight and calls it a day. Or posts it on her data wall.
We need to stop saying that we are opposed to data-driven instruction, because we're not-- we've been doing it for as long as we've been in a classroom. What we need to start saying is that the so-called data-driving tools that we're being offered (or forced) to use are crap, producing a thin sliver of useless data, a mere drop compared to the vast waterfalls of data available from the beautiful, varied human beings who are our students.
To data-driving assessment providers, we have to say, "I'm sorry that you're only capable of measuring a minute fraction of what I need to do my job. But you have to stop saying that because X is the only thing you can measure, X is the only thing that matters."
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Flipping Up, Over, Off, Whereever
All good 21st-century teachers are familiar with the flipped classroom, in which students go home to study the basic material via instructional internet-delivered video clips and then come to school to do the practice, discussion, and otherwise wrestling with the material. In this model, the teacher can leave behind direct instruction for a lifetime of coaching guide-on-the-side help for the practicing students.
My first reaction to flipping is no reaction at all, because I'm an English teacher, and we've been doing this for decades-- literally as long as I've been teaching. "Your assignment," I would tell my students, "is to go become familiar with this material on your own time, and then we will discuss it and do various interactive activities with it in class." Only instead of video clips delivered by the internet, we delivered the material with these devices called "books."
I have taught The Sun Also Rises what seems like a gazillion times. Not once have I done it by telling a class to follow along as I directly walk them through the book word by word. Their job is to read it and become familiar with it on their own. Then we do activities and discussion related to it in class. So I've been flipped forever! Also, uphill, both ways.
Now, based on my experience with the flipped classroom, let me tell you how it works out in a live classroom with actual human students.
A percentage of students will do exactly what you ask them to, and when they arrive already knowledgeable about the material, you'll launch joyfully into deeper and fuller learning.
A percentage of students will try to grasp the material on their own, but they will struggle, even fail, and before you can dive into the deeper learning and practice stuff, you're going to have to provide direct instruction for those who just didn't get it.
A percentage of students believe that "read the text" and "watch the video" = "no homework tonight." They will not do what you asked them to, correctly determining that you won'[t be able to move on until they get the material, so you'll be forced to go ahead and provide them with direct instruction anyway just so you can get on with class. Their assessment of the situation is that they can blow off the home part of their flipped classroom and pick up what they need by asking questions, piggybacking on those who ask questions, or just kind of picking it up as they go.
Of course, you may say that all that happens in my classroom because I'm depending on boring old-tech books, just words on a page, and of course students will not be sparked to paroxysms of educational ecstasy by dumb old print media. Just wait, you will say-- when they are watching videos of a knowledgeable presenter instructing them, they will be far more engaged and active learners.
Uh-huh. So being instructed by a knowledgeable, engaging human being is the secret to engaged and learning students? Do tell.
Look. If I stand up in front of my classroom and present exactly the same instruction to every class, refusing to read the room and respond to feedback from their voices and faces, and if I don't allow questions as I go, or if I respond to all questions by just repeating exactly what I said a minute ago, I would be correctly labeled a lousy teacher. But now, if I make a video of myself that behaves exactly that way, and I put it on the internet-- now I'm a visionary!!
As with many reform ideas, there are some aspects of the flipped classroom that are useful. And as with many useful reform ideas, we know they are useful because we have already been using them in our classrooms. But the overall model-- I call BS. (And that's before we even get to the question of how much of Khan Academy's content, for instance, turns our to be wrong).
As always with any hot new idea, take what you can use and ignore the rest. It's one of the most basic rules of responding to reform ideas that show up at your classroom door-- never welcome in a piece of garbage just because it's stuck to the shoe of something useful.
My first reaction to flipping is no reaction at all, because I'm an English teacher, and we've been doing this for decades-- literally as long as I've been teaching. "Your assignment," I would tell my students, "is to go become familiar with this material on your own time, and then we will discuss it and do various interactive activities with it in class." Only instead of video clips delivered by the internet, we delivered the material with these devices called "books."
I have taught The Sun Also Rises what seems like a gazillion times. Not once have I done it by telling a class to follow along as I directly walk them through the book word by word. Their job is to read it and become familiar with it on their own. Then we do activities and discussion related to it in class. So I've been flipped forever! Also, uphill, both ways.
Now, based on my experience with the flipped classroom, let me tell you how it works out in a live classroom with actual human students.
A percentage of students will do exactly what you ask them to, and when they arrive already knowledgeable about the material, you'll launch joyfully into deeper and fuller learning.
A percentage of students will try to grasp the material on their own, but they will struggle, even fail, and before you can dive into the deeper learning and practice stuff, you're going to have to provide direct instruction for those who just didn't get it.
A percentage of students believe that "read the text" and "watch the video" = "no homework tonight." They will not do what you asked them to, correctly determining that you won'[t be able to move on until they get the material, so you'll be forced to go ahead and provide them with direct instruction anyway just so you can get on with class. Their assessment of the situation is that they can blow off the home part of their flipped classroom and pick up what they need by asking questions, piggybacking on those who ask questions, or just kind of picking it up as they go.
Of course, you may say that all that happens in my classroom because I'm depending on boring old-tech books, just words on a page, and of course students will not be sparked to paroxysms of educational ecstasy by dumb old print media. Just wait, you will say-- when they are watching videos of a knowledgeable presenter instructing them, they will be far more engaged and active learners.
Uh-huh. So being instructed by a knowledgeable, engaging human being is the secret to engaged and learning students? Do tell.
Look. If I stand up in front of my classroom and present exactly the same instruction to every class, refusing to read the room and respond to feedback from their voices and faces, and if I don't allow questions as I go, or if I respond to all questions by just repeating exactly what I said a minute ago, I would be correctly labeled a lousy teacher. But now, if I make a video of myself that behaves exactly that way, and I put it on the internet-- now I'm a visionary!!
As with many reform ideas, there are some aspects of the flipped classroom that are useful. And as with many useful reform ideas, we know they are useful because we have already been using them in our classrooms. But the overall model-- I call BS. (And that's before we even get to the question of how much of Khan Academy's content, for instance, turns our to be wrong).
As always with any hot new idea, take what you can use and ignore the rest. It's one of the most basic rules of responding to reform ideas that show up at your classroom door-- never welcome in a piece of garbage just because it's stuck to the shoe of something useful.
Saturday, October 26, 2013
Why American public education is worth the fight
There's a danger in doing this kind of blog that one can get all wrapped up in anger and frustration and general irkedness, and I won't pretend for a minute that there aren't some real threats to the stability and future of American public education. But it's worth reminding myself from time to time why I care.
The US is a big gloriously polyglot mess of a country, stitched together out of pieces-parts from every other people on the planet. As such, we can only claim a handful of native art forms. Jazz, comics, maybe baseball. And true public education.
Only in America do we dump people from any and all backgrounds into the same building. Only in America do we let you pursue whatever dream of a future you can conjure up. Only in America have we put it down in law that one of your obligations as a citizen is to get an education.
We don't even make you vote, but we put the full force of law into making you learn to read and write.
We guarantee that every child, regardless of background and home life, will have at least one unrelated adult in his/her life who can provide good direction and model a healthy adult life. We guarantee that every child will have access to a place where every person is put in place to honor the needs of that child first and foremost-- not profits, productivity, or the good of the institution. As I tell my students every year, "You need to take advantage of this place. You will never again be surrounded by people whose only job is to look out for your best interests."
They say that home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in. But in America, there's one other place like that-- a public school.
American public schools collect everything there is to love and hate about our culture. American public schools display everything that is beautiful and everything that is broken about us as a people. American public schools are everything that we have to say about hopes and fears and aspirations for our future.
Given all that, of course American public schools capture all that is random and chaotic about life (as well as the very American fear and distrust of random chaos). As teachers, we know that we will leave a mark on the future, but we rarely know how. The moment that you built and planned and put all your effort behind vanishes into your students' pasts like a brief breath of wind, even as you discover that a few simple words you spoke decades ago have become a treasured guidepost in someone's journey.
American public schools are Democracy in action-- messy, tumultuous, contentious, inefficient, joyous, sprawling, striving, triumphant, rising, advancing, spirited, exhausting, reborn again and again and again. Do we contradict ourselves? Very well, we contradict ourselves. We are large. We contain multitudes.
I do not share warm-hearted stories. If you asked my students if I am warm and nurturing, they would laugh. But I believe in public education. I believe in it as an expression of our national character, and I believe there is nothing so awesome as varied young persons side by side finding their way to a greater understanding of themselves and each other, finding ways to be in the world, to be human, to be themselves.
Nothing else compares. Nothing. American public school will never be a neatly manicured hyper-orderly efficiently unified system because America will never be that kind of country. That's okay. It's not a bug; it's a feature. The fight will never be over, but American public education will always be worth fighting for.
The US is a big gloriously polyglot mess of a country, stitched together out of pieces-parts from every other people on the planet. As such, we can only claim a handful of native art forms. Jazz, comics, maybe baseball. And true public education.
Only in America do we dump people from any and all backgrounds into the same building. Only in America do we let you pursue whatever dream of a future you can conjure up. Only in America have we put it down in law that one of your obligations as a citizen is to get an education.
We don't even make you vote, but we put the full force of law into making you learn to read and write.
We guarantee that every child, regardless of background and home life, will have at least one unrelated adult in his/her life who can provide good direction and model a healthy adult life. We guarantee that every child will have access to a place where every person is put in place to honor the needs of that child first and foremost-- not profits, productivity, or the good of the institution. As I tell my students every year, "You need to take advantage of this place. You will never again be surrounded by people whose only job is to look out for your best interests."
They say that home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in. But in America, there's one other place like that-- a public school.
American public schools collect everything there is to love and hate about our culture. American public schools display everything that is beautiful and everything that is broken about us as a people. American public schools are everything that we have to say about hopes and fears and aspirations for our future.
Given all that, of course American public schools capture all that is random and chaotic about life (as well as the very American fear and distrust of random chaos). As teachers, we know that we will leave a mark on the future, but we rarely know how. The moment that you built and planned and put all your effort behind vanishes into your students' pasts like a brief breath of wind, even as you discover that a few simple words you spoke decades ago have become a treasured guidepost in someone's journey.
American public schools are Democracy in action-- messy, tumultuous, contentious, inefficient, joyous, sprawling, striving, triumphant, rising, advancing, spirited, exhausting, reborn again and again and again. Do we contradict ourselves? Very well, we contradict ourselves. We are large. We contain multitudes.
I do not share warm-hearted stories. If you asked my students if I am warm and nurturing, they would laugh. But I believe in public education. I believe in it as an expression of our national character, and I believe there is nothing so awesome as varied young persons side by side finding their way to a greater understanding of themselves and each other, finding ways to be in the world, to be human, to be themselves.
Nothing else compares. Nothing. American public school will never be a neatly manicured hyper-orderly efficiently unified system because America will never be that kind of country. That's okay. It's not a bug; it's a feature. The fight will never be over, but American public education will always be worth fighting for.
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