Next week, I'm off to Seattle for a 2.5 day session on PLCs. Our school district is trying to pilot PLCs, and my principal has asked me to attend. He's working his posterior off to get our school on track, so I would probably walk across coals if he asked, but the fact that my daughter and son-in-law just moved to Seattle is definitely a bonus.
Anyway, we have a variety of breakout sessions to attend, so I thought I would see if anyone had any recommendations regarding any of these folks. You can leave something in the comments, find me on facebook or twitter-- whatever works. Here's the list of presenters
Tim Brown
Austin Buffum
Luis Cruz
Rebecca & Richard DuFour
William M. Ferriter
Janel Keating
Shanon V. Kramer
Mike Mattos
Anthony Muhammad
Sara Schuhl
Note: It won't be useful to tell me to avoid the whole thing. I'm going. I'll be there. Any idea of how I can best use my time?
Thanks!
Monday, June 30, 2014
Thomas Newkirk's Superlative Look at CCSS
Thomas Newkirk's Holding Onto Good Ideas in a Time of Bad Ones was already a book worth reading. In 2009, it was a very thoughtful response to some of the twisting of instruction that was happening in English classrooms. Not a practical strategies book, but a book for thinking about the philosophical foundations of what we do.
Turns out that in 2013 Newkirk added a Postscript to the book entitled "Speaking Back to the Common Core," and it's a great addition to the family of essays laying out clearly why the Common Core onslaught is bad news for education. He makes nine solid points.
1. Conflict of interest
It is a fundamental principle of governance that those who establish the guidelines do not benefit financially from those guidelines. We don’t, for example, let representatives of pharmaceutical
companies set health guidelines, for fairly obvious reasons.
As far as health legislation goes, Newkirk is perhaps optimistic, but his point is still valid. The Core was built and written by the same people who expected to benefit financially for it.
2. Misdiagnosis of the problem
A central premise of the CCSS is that students are not reading difficult enough texts and that we need to ramp up the complexity of the texts they encounter. I would argue that the more serious problem is that students cease to read voluntarily, generally around middle school—and fail to develop the stamina for difficult texts
In other words, the CCSS prescription is exactly backwards.
3. Developmental Inappropriateness
By working backwards from the ending goals, creators of CCSS ended up with unrealistic expectations for young students.
4. A sterile view of reading
As a reading guy, Newkirk likes the emphasis on "thoughtful reading." But the directive to "stay within the four corners of the text"-- not so much. "This seems to me an inhuman, even impossible, and certainly unwise prescription." He demonstrates with an example.
5. Underplaying role of narrative
Newkirk offers a great argument that narrative is not some sort of separate animal unto itself, but the root of much work in many disciplines."Biology, for example, is all about process, about action, about events occurring in time, in sequence. Photosynthesis is a story; our immune system is a story; digestion is a story—even “corn sex” is a story..." Again, with examples.
6. A reform that gives extraordinary power to standardized texts
The central question is this: Are standardized tests compatible with the more complex goals of twenty-first-century literacy? Or are they a regressive and reductive technology (ironically, many of the countries we are chasing in international comparisons do not share our belief in these tests)?
And my absolute favorite parable for the testing wave ever--
It all comes down to the parable of the drunk and his keys, an old joke that goes like this: A drunk is fumbling along under a streetlight when a policeman comes up and asks him what he doing. The drunk explains he is looking for his keys. “Do you think you lost them there?” the policeman asks.
“No. But the light is better here."
7. A bonanza for commercialism
We are already seeing at work a process I call “mystification”—taking a practice that was once viewed as within the normal competence of a teacher and making it seem so technical and advanced that a new commercial product (or form of consultation) is necessary.
8. Standards directing instruction
Newkirk recognizes that the creators were skirting a line when they chose to create (totally legal) state standards and not (completely illegal) national curriculum. But he says the line between the two was already breached by Coleman and Pimental themselves when they did things like describe how many text-dependent questions should appear in basal readers.
9. Drowning out other conversations
Newkirk is talking about opportunity cost. A great question that he heard asked of a curriculum director-- "Are you taking any initiatives that are not related to the Common Core?" Newkirk wonders what conversations we won't be having.
I have only tried to whet your appetite-- you should definitely click on over and check out the full text. It's a readable, smart, well-supported look at the Core. I would recommend it in particular as a piece to refer to your civilian friends, or people who are just arriving at "So, is there something wrong with Common Core?"
Turns out that in 2013 Newkirk added a Postscript to the book entitled "Speaking Back to the Common Core," and it's a great addition to the family of essays laying out clearly why the Common Core onslaught is bad news for education. He makes nine solid points.
1. Conflict of interest
It is a fundamental principle of governance that those who establish the guidelines do not benefit financially from those guidelines. We don’t, for example, let representatives of pharmaceutical
companies set health guidelines, for fairly obvious reasons.
As far as health legislation goes, Newkirk is perhaps optimistic, but his point is still valid. The Core was built and written by the same people who expected to benefit financially for it.
2. Misdiagnosis of the problem
A central premise of the CCSS is that students are not reading difficult enough texts and that we need to ramp up the complexity of the texts they encounter. I would argue that the more serious problem is that students cease to read voluntarily, generally around middle school—and fail to develop the stamina for difficult texts
In other words, the CCSS prescription is exactly backwards.
3. Developmental Inappropriateness
By working backwards from the ending goals, creators of CCSS ended up with unrealistic expectations for young students.
4. A sterile view of reading
As a reading guy, Newkirk likes the emphasis on "thoughtful reading." But the directive to "stay within the four corners of the text"-- not so much. "This seems to me an inhuman, even impossible, and certainly unwise prescription." He demonstrates with an example.
5. Underplaying role of narrative
Newkirk offers a great argument that narrative is not some sort of separate animal unto itself, but the root of much work in many disciplines."Biology, for example, is all about process, about action, about events occurring in time, in sequence. Photosynthesis is a story; our immune system is a story; digestion is a story—even “corn sex” is a story..." Again, with examples.
6. A reform that gives extraordinary power to standardized texts
The central question is this: Are standardized tests compatible with the more complex goals of twenty-first-century literacy? Or are they a regressive and reductive technology (ironically, many of the countries we are chasing in international comparisons do not share our belief in these tests)?
And my absolute favorite parable for the testing wave ever--
It all comes down to the parable of the drunk and his keys, an old joke that goes like this: A drunk is fumbling along under a streetlight when a policeman comes up and asks him what he doing. The drunk explains he is looking for his keys. “Do you think you lost them there?” the policeman asks.
“No. But the light is better here."
7. A bonanza for commercialism
We are already seeing at work a process I call “mystification”—taking a practice that was once viewed as within the normal competence of a teacher and making it seem so technical and advanced that a new commercial product (or form of consultation) is necessary.
8. Standards directing instruction
Newkirk recognizes that the creators were skirting a line when they chose to create (totally legal) state standards and not (completely illegal) national curriculum. But he says the line between the two was already breached by Coleman and Pimental themselves when they did things like describe how many text-dependent questions should appear in basal readers.
9. Drowning out other conversations
Newkirk is talking about opportunity cost. A great question that he heard asked of a curriculum director-- "Are you taking any initiatives that are not related to the Common Core?" Newkirk wonders what conversations we won't be having.
I have only tried to whet your appetite-- you should definitely click on over and check out the full text. It's a readable, smart, well-supported look at the Core. I would recommend it in particular as a piece to refer to your civilian friends, or people who are just arriving at "So, is there something wrong with Common Core?"
The Mystery of Excellence
Diane Ravitch's recent columns about Ms. McLaughlin, one of the undeservingly employed terrible teachers of the Vergara trial, underlines one of the central problems of the whole teacher evaluation portion of the reformster dream.
Ms. McLaughlin won awards for teaching excellence not once, but twice in her career. And yet one of the plaintiffs found her to be grossly ineffective. Now, it's possible that there are factors at play here-- the plaintiff was reportedly recruited for the lawsuit by her only "effective" teacher, a teacher who was RIFed and whose job was then taken by Ms. McLaughlin. So, wheels within wheels.
But could it be possible that a teacher so many students found wonderful was a total dog for another teacher? Of course. Because as much as we think we get excellence in this country, excellence is still a mystery.
I don't imagine I'm God's gift to teaching, but I do okay. My feedback from students, both blind and personal, has been good over the years. But there have been years of my career when I was definitely less good, and there have been students who have been sure that I sucked hugely.
I had a colleague years ago whose students were sure they never did a damn thing in her class, that she was confused and disorganized and didn't know what she was doing. Yet those students came to me next, and invariably time after time I would ask a question about X, and they would answer it, and I would ask, "How did you know that?" and they would realize that Ms. McClueless had actually taught them a great deal.
And it's not just teaching. Every successful writer has devoted fans and an assortment of rabid haters. Every boss of a successful company has supporters and employees who would like to see him roasted slowly over a gas grill. And of course there has never been a political leader who was universally hailed as excellent.
How can someone be both excellent and terrible simultaneously? Mostly it comes down to different measures. If we measure strictly on writing skill, Stephenie Meyer is not awesome, but if we measure based on ability to generate revenue, Stephenie Meyer is a genius.
When measuring excellence, we use a wide variety of metrics. Some are irrelevant; my grandmother used to stop listening to any singer who was divorced, because a divorced person couldn't possibly sing well. Some not only accept bias, but embrace it-- if you are not on The Right Side, then everything you have to say must be horribly wrong. And some are just a matter of personal values. I may just want to hire somebody who gets the job done even if he's not very pleasant, while you may be as concerned about getting along with the person as getting the job done.
The problem with identifying teacher excellence has always been that we have a million ideas about what a teacher is supposed to do. Should Pat's kindergarten teacher make sure that Pat is happy and getting along well with others and maintaining a joyful attitude about life no matter how little Pat learns, or should Pat's teacher be making sure that Pat can master sight words even if it makes Pat miserable to do it? And if we're splitting the difference, where do we split it? And that's before we get to all the other expectations-- should my students learn traditional grammar (and how much) or should we spend more time on writing and what part of the canon (if any) should we read? Should my classroom be a free and open place where everything is filled with the spirit of free and open inquiry, or should it be like a tight, well-disciplined machine? And what's the proper balance of being teacher-directed and student directed?
We could play that game all day. You get the idea. We have a gazillion ideas of what an excellent teacher looks like.
Plenty of attempts have been made to use science-ish techniques to break down the traits of teacher excellence. People still disagree. Or rather, people still default to their own idea of what teacher excellence looks like.
The reformsters thought they had a solution. We'll just define an excellent teacher as one whose students get good scores on the Big Test. And now we're going to use Vergara-style lawsuits and new teacher-eval laws to cement that definition. You can have whatever definition of teacher excellence you like. The courts and the legislatures have the last word.
We could talk about why that definition of teacher excellence is small and narrow and not particularly good. But that's been covered. Let's talk about how it's reformsters shooting themselves in the feet again.
Remember how the whole Big Test thing worked:
Reformsters: We will give students a test to show exactly what they learned in the course of the year.
Parents:Well, that sounds like a good idea.
[Students actually take the test]
Parents: Damnl! I didn't realize that was how that was going to work. You want to do it some more?! Oh, hell no.
Reformsters can install new systems of determining teacher excellence, covered with a smoke screen about how this will "protect great teachers" and "guarantee a great teacher in every classroom." But when the random "ineffectives" start appearing and the public is seeing beloved Ms. Awesomesauce being canned because some system that nobody can really explain claims that she's no good, there will be noise. Particularly in smaller districts (we don't all teach in New York City, Chicago and LA) where teachers are well-known in their communities.
Reformsters keep making the same mistake. It's not enough to have a great sales pitch and convincing story about how well your super-duper plan is going to work. At some point, you have to deliver. From the promise of the Awesome Big Test (which was never going to work) to the promise of charter schools (which, operated for something other than profit, could have), reformsters have made promises they failed to keep.
The promise of evaluation-based staffing will be more of the same. When people see how badly it actually work, reformsters will feel the same kind of pushback that has them scurrying for cover on testing (umm... moratorium! yea, that's it!). The truly unfortunate part is that some large number of teaching careers will be derailed and uncountable could-have-been teachers chased away from the profession by the time that pushback happens. Reformsters are shooting themselves in the feet, but a lot of other people are going to get caught in the crossfire.
Ms. McLaughlin won awards for teaching excellence not once, but twice in her career. And yet one of the plaintiffs found her to be grossly ineffective. Now, it's possible that there are factors at play here-- the plaintiff was reportedly recruited for the lawsuit by her only "effective" teacher, a teacher who was RIFed and whose job was then taken by Ms. McLaughlin. So, wheels within wheels.
But could it be possible that a teacher so many students found wonderful was a total dog for another teacher? Of course. Because as much as we think we get excellence in this country, excellence is still a mystery.
I don't imagine I'm God's gift to teaching, but I do okay. My feedback from students, both blind and personal, has been good over the years. But there have been years of my career when I was definitely less good, and there have been students who have been sure that I sucked hugely.
I had a colleague years ago whose students were sure they never did a damn thing in her class, that she was confused and disorganized and didn't know what she was doing. Yet those students came to me next, and invariably time after time I would ask a question about X, and they would answer it, and I would ask, "How did you know that?" and they would realize that Ms. McClueless had actually taught them a great deal.
And it's not just teaching. Every successful writer has devoted fans and an assortment of rabid haters. Every boss of a successful company has supporters and employees who would like to see him roasted slowly over a gas grill. And of course there has never been a political leader who was universally hailed as excellent.
How can someone be both excellent and terrible simultaneously? Mostly it comes down to different measures. If we measure strictly on writing skill, Stephenie Meyer is not awesome, but if we measure based on ability to generate revenue, Stephenie Meyer is a genius.
When measuring excellence, we use a wide variety of metrics. Some are irrelevant; my grandmother used to stop listening to any singer who was divorced, because a divorced person couldn't possibly sing well. Some not only accept bias, but embrace it-- if you are not on The Right Side, then everything you have to say must be horribly wrong. And some are just a matter of personal values. I may just want to hire somebody who gets the job done even if he's not very pleasant, while you may be as concerned about getting along with the person as getting the job done.
The problem with identifying teacher excellence has always been that we have a million ideas about what a teacher is supposed to do. Should Pat's kindergarten teacher make sure that Pat is happy and getting along well with others and maintaining a joyful attitude about life no matter how little Pat learns, or should Pat's teacher be making sure that Pat can master sight words even if it makes Pat miserable to do it? And if we're splitting the difference, where do we split it? And that's before we get to all the other expectations-- should my students learn traditional grammar (and how much) or should we spend more time on writing and what part of the canon (if any) should we read? Should my classroom be a free and open place where everything is filled with the spirit of free and open inquiry, or should it be like a tight, well-disciplined machine? And what's the proper balance of being teacher-directed and student directed?
We could play that game all day. You get the idea. We have a gazillion ideas of what an excellent teacher looks like.
Plenty of attempts have been made to use science-ish techniques to break down the traits of teacher excellence. People still disagree. Or rather, people still default to their own idea of what teacher excellence looks like.
The reformsters thought they had a solution. We'll just define an excellent teacher as one whose students get good scores on the Big Test. And now we're going to use Vergara-style lawsuits and new teacher-eval laws to cement that definition. You can have whatever definition of teacher excellence you like. The courts and the legislatures have the last word.
We could talk about why that definition of teacher excellence is small and narrow and not particularly good. But that's been covered. Let's talk about how it's reformsters shooting themselves in the feet again.
Remember how the whole Big Test thing worked:
Reformsters: We will give students a test to show exactly what they learned in the course of the year.
Parents:Well, that sounds like a good idea.
[Students actually take the test]
Parents: Damnl! I didn't realize that was how that was going to work. You want to do it some more?! Oh, hell no.
Reformsters can install new systems of determining teacher excellence, covered with a smoke screen about how this will "protect great teachers" and "guarantee a great teacher in every classroom." But when the random "ineffectives" start appearing and the public is seeing beloved Ms. Awesomesauce being canned because some system that nobody can really explain claims that she's no good, there will be noise. Particularly in smaller districts (we don't all teach in New York City, Chicago and LA) where teachers are well-known in their communities.
Reformsters keep making the same mistake. It's not enough to have a great sales pitch and convincing story about how well your super-duper plan is going to work. At some point, you have to deliver. From the promise of the Awesome Big Test (which was never going to work) to the promise of charter schools (which, operated for something other than profit, could have), reformsters have made promises they failed to keep.
The promise of evaluation-based staffing will be more of the same. When people see how badly it actually work, reformsters will feel the same kind of pushback that has them scurrying for cover on testing (umm... moratorium! yea, that's it!). The truly unfortunate part is that some large number of teaching careers will be derailed and uncountable could-have-been teachers chased away from the profession by the time that pushback happens. Reformsters are shooting themselves in the feet, but a lot of other people are going to get caught in the crossfire.
Sunday, June 29, 2014
The Uses of Small Data
Brian Kibby, the president of the Higher Education Group at McGraw-Hill, took to Huffington Post last week to praise Small Data.
"Big data" might be the most hollow, misused term in education. For all of the chest-pounding about how big data has come to education, how are colleges and instructors actually using it --now, in 2014?
Kibby notes that we've long heard that Big Data will change everything. But in fact "true big data does not exist in education today." Instead of cheering or fearing how Big Data will save us or bring on doomsday, Kibby suggests that we look at how it might actually be useful right now. Big Data could be awesome, and Kibby is a fan in theory, but in practice there are justifiable concerns about privacy as well as a lack of technology that can actually collect, crunch and process the data back to an instructor in any useful way.
Kibby would rather talk about what we can actually do today, and what we can do today are targetted analytics: "things like assignment scores, time spent on the material, progress in an adaptive learning environment."
What we're talking about is short term use, small picture stuff. "These tools aren't paying attention to whether the student had Frosted Flakes or Cheerios for breakfast the morning before a test, but they're looking at what matters most." (I'm guessing Kibby's familiar with the Knewton video) Instead, small data can monitor things like exactly how well the student did on the homework, or how long he worked on it.
What is the upside for McGraw-Hill in the moderately-courageous, slightly-new world?
Odd coincidence-- I just saw the Undercover Boss episode about the chancellor of the University of California at Riverside. He watched a class of 250 do lecture question response with a clicker which allowed the instructor to immediately gauge how well the class was getting it. It's cool stuff. I've seen it in action. I would use it.
What conclusion did the chancellor draw? This is really cool tech that would work well to scale up into other large classes. With this kind of tech, everybody could teach classes of five hundred.
I've always maintained that classroom teachers already do massive amounts of data collection, far more rich and varied than what reformsters have been pushing at us via testing etc. What a teacher collects by looking at, talking to, interacting with, giving small quizes, informal assessments-- we collect a ton of data every day that allows us to develop rich and valuable student assessments that help us make instructional choices and adapt teaching to the individual needs.
But there are limits to that. Beyond a certain number of students, I just can't collect all the data. I can't watch 100 faces to see reactions. I can't informally verbally assess 100 students.
With small data systems in place? Hmmm. Cyber schooling has turned out to be a bust for all but a small sector of the student population. But what about a hybrid, somewhere in between the two extremes. A few hundred students still in a classroom with a live, actual instructor, but interacting through computer tech that allows him to collect and save response data from all those students.
I'm not sure how well it would work. But if it worked well at all, McGraw-Hill could sell a lot of materials, and Anywhere University could cut 50% of that pesky adjunct staff.
"Big data" might be the most hollow, misused term in education. For all of the chest-pounding about how big data has come to education, how are colleges and instructors actually using it --now, in 2014?
Kibby notes that we've long heard that Big Data will change everything. But in fact "true big data does not exist in education today." Instead of cheering or fearing how Big Data will save us or bring on doomsday, Kibby suggests that we look at how it might actually be useful right now. Big Data could be awesome, and Kibby is a fan in theory, but in practice there are justifiable concerns about privacy as well as a lack of technology that can actually collect, crunch and process the data back to an instructor in any useful way.
Kibby would rather talk about what we can actually do today, and what we can do today are targetted analytics: "things like assignment scores, time spent on the material, progress in an adaptive learning environment."
What we're talking about is short term use, small picture stuff. "These tools aren't paying attention to whether the student had Frosted Flakes or Cheerios for breakfast the morning before a test, but they're looking at what matters most." (I'm guessing Kibby's familiar with the Knewton video) Instead, small data can monitor things like exactly how well the student did on the homework, or how long he worked on it.
What is the upside for McGraw-Hill in the moderately-courageous, slightly-new world?
Odd coincidence-- I just saw the Undercover Boss episode about the chancellor of the University of California at Riverside. He watched a class of 250 do lecture question response with a clicker which allowed the instructor to immediately gauge how well the class was getting it. It's cool stuff. I've seen it in action. I would use it.
What conclusion did the chancellor draw? This is really cool tech that would work well to scale up into other large classes. With this kind of tech, everybody could teach classes of five hundred.
I've always maintained that classroom teachers already do massive amounts of data collection, far more rich and varied than what reformsters have been pushing at us via testing etc. What a teacher collects by looking at, talking to, interacting with, giving small quizes, informal assessments-- we collect a ton of data every day that allows us to develop rich and valuable student assessments that help us make instructional choices and adapt teaching to the individual needs.
But there are limits to that. Beyond a certain number of students, I just can't collect all the data. I can't watch 100 faces to see reactions. I can't informally verbally assess 100 students.
With small data systems in place? Hmmm. Cyber schooling has turned out to be a bust for all but a small sector of the student population. But what about a hybrid, somewhere in between the two extremes. A few hundred students still in a classroom with a live, actual instructor, but interacting through computer tech that allows him to collect and save response data from all those students.
I'm not sure how well it would work. But if it worked well at all, McGraw-Hill could sell a lot of materials, and Anywhere University could cut 50% of that pesky adjunct staff.
A Few Blog Recommendations
This will be post #400 on the blog, and I thought I'd use it to direct your attention to some other blogs. This is by no means an exhaustive and comprehensive list-- there are tons of people blogging about education these days, and I keep discovering new (to me) voices. I've put off writing this kind of post because I don't want to short-change someone, but I'm going to go ahead anyway, because better imperfectly than never on this.
@ the Chalk Face
One of several collective blogs, gathering together many of the major writers in the blogosphere, including Mercedes Schneider, Kris Nielsen, Shaun Johnson and Tim Slekar. Comes with a radio show on Blog Talk Radio
Network for Public Education News Briefs
Another anthology blog, with pieces from many members of the Network for Public Education.
Public School Shakedown
A blog from the Progressive that presents a fine roster of many great bloggers, collected with a progressive bent.
Jersey Jazzman
One of many regional bloggers who make it worth your while to read about places that you don't actually live. He's good with sass and sharp language, but the Jazzman is also a very capable cruncher of numbers and stalker of stats. And New Jersey is ground zero for many reformster initiatives, so it's worth your while to pay attention.
Crazy Crawfish's Blog
New Orleans is another petri dish in which strange and important things have been left to grow. This blog covers it with style.
Perdido Street Station
This blog covers all things New York. You'll notice that I have a soft spot for writers who bring a sharp edge and wit to their writing. Bonus points for the obscure-ish SF reference in the title.
Yinzercation
Pittsburgh based, but covering Pennsylvania, this blogger-activist has scored some major victories over the past few years.
Common Core
Out in Utah, three conservative moms got together to stand up against CCSS. These ladies have done their homework, and they are often a great source of facts.
Wait What?
Jonathan Pelto has kept the heat turned up in Connecticut, to the point that he is now running for governor against an incumbent not-very-education-friendly Democratic governor.
School Finance 101
With as many economists and business types are lined up against public education, it's nice to have someone who can count those beans honestly and clearly enough that laypeople can get it working on the side of the angels.
Teacher Under Construction
John Kuhn called Steph Rivera "a force of nature." Follow this young woman who has a powerful record as an activist and an impossible-to-ignore voice as a writer.
Wag the Dog
Freewheeling far-ranging discussion of many of the issues of the day in education.
VAM-boozled
Audrey Amrein-Beardsley brings a clear understanding of the data and fuzzy math behind the murkiest subject of the day-- VAM. She makes it easy to understand what the heck is going on, and why it should stop.
Russ on Reading
Russ Walsh came to blog about reading and reading instruction; he stayed to try to figure out what the heck is happening in our schools today. Often wry and witty, this teaching veteran belongs on your blogroll.
Edushyster
Edushyster brings legitimate journalist chops to her work, but she is also one of the funniest writers in the blogosphere. Real substance in a sweet candy coating.
The Becoming Radical
Reading Paul Thomas just makes me feel smarter. Well-read, deep-thinking, Thomas manages to connect the clear specifics of the education world to the Big Ideas underlying them. And he knows his comics, too, so bonus.
Susan Ohanian
Navigating Ohanian's blog can be daunting, but that's because she's been on line forever. Ohanian was sounding the alarm on the modern school reform movement while many of us were still snoozing. Hers is a voice that deserves attention.
Peg with Pen
She does not post often, but when she does, you want to pay attention.
Cloaking Inequity
Julian Vasquez Heilig is one of the most powerful important voices out there right now. The man appears to need neither sleep nor rest, and he has forced many people to take another look at what's happening to equity and equality in education.
Gatsby in L.A.
An unusual blog in that it's just about finished. Ellie Herman was a screenwriter/producer who dropped out of the biz to get into a classroom. Her adventure started last August, and you can read through her whole year. Smart and sensitive.
Honest Practicum
Erin Osborne working to find her way through the reformy morass, with a real gift for graphics.
Living in Dialogue
Anthony Cody is a founding member of the Network for Public Education and a great voice for the resistance. His EdWeek blog examines many of the important topics of the day.
Mercedes Schneider's Edublog
If you read here often, you already know I'm a fan. Indispensable research hound, this woman has ferreted out more raw information about what's really going on behind the curtain than any other single writer.
The Answer Key
At the Washington Post, Valerie Strauss is one of the best mainstream writers about education out there, and she features plenty of top-notch guest talent.
Diane Ravitch's Blog
If you read me, you undoubtedly read Ravitch, but just in case, know that in the edublogoverse, all roads lead to her. An insanely prolific poster, she provides a daily digest of what's being written, what news is breaking, and what we all need to know.
There are many, many, many, many more. Hunt through the links on the right side of the screen. I encourage you to read, follow links, and pass on what you like. You can help voices be heard by posting, tweeting and sharing the words that are powerful for you.
@ the Chalk Face
One of several collective blogs, gathering together many of the major writers in the blogosphere, including Mercedes Schneider, Kris Nielsen, Shaun Johnson and Tim Slekar. Comes with a radio show on Blog Talk Radio
Network for Public Education News Briefs
Another anthology blog, with pieces from many members of the Network for Public Education.
Public School Shakedown
A blog from the Progressive that presents a fine roster of many great bloggers, collected with a progressive bent.
Jersey Jazzman
One of many regional bloggers who make it worth your while to read about places that you don't actually live. He's good with sass and sharp language, but the Jazzman is also a very capable cruncher of numbers and stalker of stats. And New Jersey is ground zero for many reformster initiatives, so it's worth your while to pay attention.
Crazy Crawfish's Blog
New Orleans is another petri dish in which strange and important things have been left to grow. This blog covers it with style.
Perdido Street Station
This blog covers all things New York. You'll notice that I have a soft spot for writers who bring a sharp edge and wit to their writing. Bonus points for the obscure-ish SF reference in the title.
Yinzercation
Pittsburgh based, but covering Pennsylvania, this blogger-activist has scored some major victories over the past few years.
Common Core
Out in Utah, three conservative moms got together to stand up against CCSS. These ladies have done their homework, and they are often a great source of facts.
Wait What?
Jonathan Pelto has kept the heat turned up in Connecticut, to the point that he is now running for governor against an incumbent not-very-education-friendly Democratic governor.
School Finance 101
With as many economists and business types are lined up against public education, it's nice to have someone who can count those beans honestly and clearly enough that laypeople can get it working on the side of the angels.
Teacher Under Construction
John Kuhn called Steph Rivera "a force of nature." Follow this young woman who has a powerful record as an activist and an impossible-to-ignore voice as a writer.
Wag the Dog
Freewheeling far-ranging discussion of many of the issues of the day in education.
VAM-boozled
Audrey Amrein-Beardsley brings a clear understanding of the data and fuzzy math behind the murkiest subject of the day-- VAM. She makes it easy to understand what the heck is going on, and why it should stop.
Russ on Reading
Russ Walsh came to blog about reading and reading instruction; he stayed to try to figure out what the heck is happening in our schools today. Often wry and witty, this teaching veteran belongs on your blogroll.
Edushyster
Edushyster brings legitimate journalist chops to her work, but she is also one of the funniest writers in the blogosphere. Real substance in a sweet candy coating.
The Becoming Radical
Reading Paul Thomas just makes me feel smarter. Well-read, deep-thinking, Thomas manages to connect the clear specifics of the education world to the Big Ideas underlying them. And he knows his comics, too, so bonus.
Susan Ohanian
Navigating Ohanian's blog can be daunting, but that's because she's been on line forever. Ohanian was sounding the alarm on the modern school reform movement while many of us were still snoozing. Hers is a voice that deserves attention.
Peg with Pen
She does not post often, but when she does, you want to pay attention.
Cloaking Inequity
Julian Vasquez Heilig is one of the most powerful important voices out there right now. The man appears to need neither sleep nor rest, and he has forced many people to take another look at what's happening to equity and equality in education.
Gatsby in L.A.
An unusual blog in that it's just about finished. Ellie Herman was a screenwriter/producer who dropped out of the biz to get into a classroom. Her adventure started last August, and you can read through her whole year. Smart and sensitive.
Honest Practicum
Erin Osborne working to find her way through the reformy morass, with a real gift for graphics.
Living in Dialogue
Anthony Cody is a founding member of the Network for Public Education and a great voice for the resistance. His EdWeek blog examines many of the important topics of the day.
Mercedes Schneider's Edublog
If you read here often, you already know I'm a fan. Indispensable research hound, this woman has ferreted out more raw information about what's really going on behind the curtain than any other single writer.
The Answer Key
At the Washington Post, Valerie Strauss is one of the best mainstream writers about education out there, and she features plenty of top-notch guest talent.
Diane Ravitch's Blog
If you read me, you undoubtedly read Ravitch, but just in case, know that in the edublogoverse, all roads lead to her. An insanely prolific poster, she provides a daily digest of what's being written, what news is breaking, and what we all need to know.
There are many, many, many, many more. Hunt through the links on the right side of the screen. I encourage you to read, follow links, and pass on what you like. You can help voices be heard by posting, tweeting and sharing the words that are powerful for you.
John King's Story
Listening to people tell their story often gives us a clue what they are thinking about, how they do the connecting of certain dots. That was my reaction to watching this video from a Manhattan Institute appearance by John King. Sometimes people who are sincere about wanting to fix education in this country (I do not assume all reformsters are cynical profiteering greedhounds) make connections between things that simply don't make sense. But by looking at their stories, sometimes we can see what The Dream is for education.
The whole business is introed by Charles Sahm, a deputy director at the Institute with whom I've had some entirely pleasant email correspondence, and his intro contains one notable nugget-- apparently the Manhattan Institute is planning to release rankings of every school in the country next year. Swell.
Norman Atkins Leads Off
But next up, to introduce John King, is Norman Atkins of the Relay Graduate School of Education and Uncommon Schools. Between his intro and the beginning of John King's speech, we get a full version of the John King Story.
Atkins opens by observing that "teacher training" is now a "politically incorrect" phrase. "So we have to be careful with our language." He's just saying, I guess.
Atkins sets up an analogy by referring to the group that launched Uncommon Schools as a dream team, and John King was Michael Jordan. But he's going to tell a story.
Labor Day, 1999. John King (who would have been about 24) and Evan Ruttle (sp?) were getting ready to open Roxberry Prep, one of the country's most swell charter schools. John had worked for two or three years (my sources say two) at City on the Hill Charter School. So it's been a long day, but late in the day, they noticed that the student name stickers on the lockers were "put up in a really sloppy fashion." King declared that unacceptable, so in the wee hours, they were fixing the stickers on the lockers. And while they were doing that, King was describing the vision for teaching each of the core subjects at Roxberry, based on all the work they had done preparing the school. In Atkins telling, this involved scouring the international standards and national standards "such as they were" and Massachusetts standards. King had figured out the arc of lessons and units and "was narrating this with tremendous energy and detail." And at that moment, Roxberry Prep was born.
So here's one piece of The Dream-- a school that is squeaky-perfect, completely planned and controlled by the people who run it. Also note-- given all the illustrative stories Atkins could pick to show how King injected greatness into Roxberry, he picks a story without any teachers or students in it.
Classroom Is Key
Atkins quotes Sol Stern to Sol Stern, saying "the primal scene of all education reform is in the classsroom." One of the reasons we're in so much trouble in American education, says Atkins, is many of the people in charge of education haven't spent time in the classroom." But we are blessed in New York to have a leader "who knows instruction and what goes on in the classroom better than anybody."
Someday I'll have a chance to send out a reformster questionnaire, and one of the questions I'll ask is "How do you think people best acquire knowledge of how to do classroom instruction?" Because on the one hand reformsters think teachers (particularly experienced ones) have no knowledge worth consulting. On the other hand, John King, who taught in a public classroom a grand total ONE year, and only two more in a charter classroom, somehow knows more about classroom instruction than God.
Atkins says that one of the reasons that King is beloved is that he would plan down to every small detail the instruction for the entire year in his school and our schools. He would do this with high standards, and plan the entire year in detail for the students to achieve that.
Well, one can certainly see how that might lead to an education commissioner who likes the idea of canned online day-by-day lessons on engageNY. But what reason do we have to believe that this is good teaching? Certainly I should not walk into the classroom and pull today's lesson out of my butt, but if know exactly what I'm doing on the 150th day of school before I have even met my students on the first, I am NOT a great teacher. I am a content delivery specialist, and my students are little cogs who are supposed to mold themselves to fit my program. I have already built my square hole; all you pegs had better shape up, no matter what shape you started out as.
Educational Rock Star
Also, according to Atkins, King was out and about in his schools a great deal, popping into every classroom on a daily basis, "managing instruction." He continues to do this as commissioner. He isn't just watching teachers, but his eye is on the students, seeing what they're learning and if they're learning. He's asking would this class be good enough for my kids. He is also a master at giving feedback; his visits are not evaluative with your career on the line, but a way to get better. Imagine having someone "so brilliant" come into your room and give you "incredible" feedback.
This is another part of The Dream. A necessary ingredient for excellent schools is rock star leaders, educational geniuses who can lead all the lesser beings. Reformsters like to talk about teams, but what they invariably describe is a benevolent monarchy. A brilliant creates and directs a vision, and the rest of the plebes fall in line and implement it.
I expect this is why King has spent his whole career gravitating to charters-- because in a charter, the ability to control everything, every detail, every teacher, every student, is so much greater. You can teach exactly the kind of students you want with exactly the teachers you want teaching exactly as you want.
Boosting Common Core
John asks questions, and the core question is "Is this good enough?" Always positive, but never satisfied. And always told the truth. Being the "captain" for education is hard, but we need a truth teller because we are lying to ourselves. 80% think other people's schools are failing, but our own schools are great. "There's something not right about that." By plugging CCSS, King is exposing that what we're doing isn't good enough.
Why is that a good idea? Again, I'm no fan of building educational camels in committee, but what if there aren't enough geniuses to go around? What if the genius isn't right all of the time? What if somebody passes themselves off as a genius but is actually a gigantic tool? And doesn't this tend to result in schools that are organized around the genius and not the students?
Atkins now attaches King to the tradition of Horace Mann. Mann wanted common schools for everyone; King wants Common Core for everyone. Atkins defines Common Core as "highest possible standards for all our children." Atkins name-checks Steiner and Cerf who both suggested that John's intro include a reference to his courage. When other states are ducking away from CCSS, King has the courage to stay the course.
King Tells His Story
The Dream is always of high standards, and we continue to cling to the unexamined (by reformsters) assumption that CCSS represent high standards, not to mention the unexamined assumption that such a thing as a single set of standards that will fit our entire nation of children is even do-able, or could even bring about results. None of those assumptions have been proven correct. Repeatedly pushing them forward is not the same as proving them.
King leads off with his story. And make no mistake-- King's story is a hell of a story. Mother passed away when he was eight, leaving King with a father who was dying of Alazheimers, King credits public school teachers with saving him. And he doesn't do it in a vague, general way-- he routinely names the guy. Mr. Osterweil was challenging and exciting and King says that in his class, they had the Common Core before it was the Common Core. They studied Shakespeare. They would read the New York Times every day and summarize the articles, and King benefited forever after from the academic work and the discipline. They had a classroom that was stable, challenging, and nurturing.
It is a great story, even if usually skips over the part where he was thrown out of Phillips Andover ivy league prep school. And the fact that King equates Common Core with Mr. Osterweil's class shows yet another disconnect in the CCSS love-fest. Because, of course, Mr. Osterweil's class was like that because Mr. Osterweil was free to do what he judged best for his roomful of students.
What I wish King would ask himself is, what would happen to Mr. Osterweil today? How many of those lessons that King cherishes would be put aside for test prep. How much time would he have to spend teaching the required lessons from the state; would Principal King let Mr. Osterweil set his own program, or would King have the lessons all planned out in detail, first day through last, before Mr. Osterweil even came back from summer break? How stable and nurturing would the class be when Mr. Osterweil had to guide his charges through this week's punishing and demoralizing test. I'd bet that King is confident that Mr. Osterweil would be found highly effective on his modern evaluation, but I'm not so confident. If Mr. Osterweil had the wrong assortment of students, or was unable to use his most effective techniques because Principal King's program didn't allow for them, would it turn out that King's favorite life-saving teacher was rated ineffective?
Just how many more Mr. Osterweil's are out there, and what is Commissioner King doing to make sure that they be the best classroom teachers they can be?
The whole business is introed by Charles Sahm, a deputy director at the Institute with whom I've had some entirely pleasant email correspondence, and his intro contains one notable nugget-- apparently the Manhattan Institute is planning to release rankings of every school in the country next year. Swell.
Norman Atkins Leads Off
But next up, to introduce John King, is Norman Atkins of the Relay Graduate School of Education and Uncommon Schools. Between his intro and the beginning of John King's speech, we get a full version of the John King Story.
Atkins opens by observing that "teacher training" is now a "politically incorrect" phrase. "So we have to be careful with our language." He's just saying, I guess.
Atkins sets up an analogy by referring to the group that launched Uncommon Schools as a dream team, and John King was Michael Jordan. But he's going to tell a story.
Labor Day, 1999. John King (who would have been about 24) and Evan Ruttle (sp?) were getting ready to open Roxberry Prep, one of the country's most swell charter schools. John had worked for two or three years (my sources say two) at City on the Hill Charter School. So it's been a long day, but late in the day, they noticed that the student name stickers on the lockers were "put up in a really sloppy fashion." King declared that unacceptable, so in the wee hours, they were fixing the stickers on the lockers. And while they were doing that, King was describing the vision for teaching each of the core subjects at Roxberry, based on all the work they had done preparing the school. In Atkins telling, this involved scouring the international standards and national standards "such as they were" and Massachusetts standards. King had figured out the arc of lessons and units and "was narrating this with tremendous energy and detail." And at that moment, Roxberry Prep was born.
So here's one piece of The Dream-- a school that is squeaky-perfect, completely planned and controlled by the people who run it. Also note-- given all the illustrative stories Atkins could pick to show how King injected greatness into Roxberry, he picks a story without any teachers or students in it.
Classroom Is Key
Atkins quotes Sol Stern to Sol Stern, saying "the primal scene of all education reform is in the classsroom." One of the reasons we're in so much trouble in American education, says Atkins, is many of the people in charge of education haven't spent time in the classroom." But we are blessed in New York to have a leader "who knows instruction and what goes on in the classroom better than anybody."
Someday I'll have a chance to send out a reformster questionnaire, and one of the questions I'll ask is "How do you think people best acquire knowledge of how to do classroom instruction?" Because on the one hand reformsters think teachers (particularly experienced ones) have no knowledge worth consulting. On the other hand, John King, who taught in a public classroom a grand total ONE year, and only two more in a charter classroom, somehow knows more about classroom instruction than God.
Atkins says that one of the reasons that King is beloved is that he would plan down to every small detail the instruction for the entire year in his school and our schools. He would do this with high standards, and plan the entire year in detail for the students to achieve that.
Well, one can certainly see how that might lead to an education commissioner who likes the idea of canned online day-by-day lessons on engageNY. But what reason do we have to believe that this is good teaching? Certainly I should not walk into the classroom and pull today's lesson out of my butt, but if know exactly what I'm doing on the 150th day of school before I have even met my students on the first, I am NOT a great teacher. I am a content delivery specialist, and my students are little cogs who are supposed to mold themselves to fit my program. I have already built my square hole; all you pegs had better shape up, no matter what shape you started out as.
Educational Rock Star
Also, according to Atkins, King was out and about in his schools a great deal, popping into every classroom on a daily basis, "managing instruction." He continues to do this as commissioner. He isn't just watching teachers, but his eye is on the students, seeing what they're learning and if they're learning. He's asking would this class be good enough for my kids. He is also a master at giving feedback; his visits are not evaluative with your career on the line, but a way to get better. Imagine having someone "so brilliant" come into your room and give you "incredible" feedback.
This is another part of The Dream. A necessary ingredient for excellent schools is rock star leaders, educational geniuses who can lead all the lesser beings. Reformsters like to talk about teams, but what they invariably describe is a benevolent monarchy. A brilliant creates and directs a vision, and the rest of the plebes fall in line and implement it.
I expect this is why King has spent his whole career gravitating to charters-- because in a charter, the ability to control everything, every detail, every teacher, every student, is so much greater. You can teach exactly the kind of students you want with exactly the teachers you want teaching exactly as you want.
Boosting Common Core
John asks questions, and the core question is "Is this good enough?" Always positive, but never satisfied. And always told the truth. Being the "captain" for education is hard, but we need a truth teller because we are lying to ourselves. 80% think other people's schools are failing, but our own schools are great. "There's something not right about that." By plugging CCSS, King is exposing that what we're doing isn't good enough.
Why is that a good idea? Again, I'm no fan of building educational camels in committee, but what if there aren't enough geniuses to go around? What if the genius isn't right all of the time? What if somebody passes themselves off as a genius but is actually a gigantic tool? And doesn't this tend to result in schools that are organized around the genius and not the students?
Atkins now attaches King to the tradition of Horace Mann. Mann wanted common schools for everyone; King wants Common Core for everyone. Atkins defines Common Core as "highest possible standards for all our children." Atkins name-checks Steiner and Cerf who both suggested that John's intro include a reference to his courage. When other states are ducking away from CCSS, King has the courage to stay the course.
King Tells His Story
The Dream is always of high standards, and we continue to cling to the unexamined (by reformsters) assumption that CCSS represent high standards, not to mention the unexamined assumption that such a thing as a single set of standards that will fit our entire nation of children is even do-able, or could even bring about results. None of those assumptions have been proven correct. Repeatedly pushing them forward is not the same as proving them.
King leads off with his story. And make no mistake-- King's story is a hell of a story. Mother passed away when he was eight, leaving King with a father who was dying of Alazheimers, King credits public school teachers with saving him. And he doesn't do it in a vague, general way-- he routinely names the guy. Mr. Osterweil was challenging and exciting and King says that in his class, they had the Common Core before it was the Common Core. They studied Shakespeare. They would read the New York Times every day and summarize the articles, and King benefited forever after from the academic work and the discipline. They had a classroom that was stable, challenging, and nurturing.
It is a great story, even if usually skips over the part where he was thrown out of Phillips Andover ivy league prep school. And the fact that King equates Common Core with Mr. Osterweil's class shows yet another disconnect in the CCSS love-fest. Because, of course, Mr. Osterweil's class was like that because Mr. Osterweil was free to do what he judged best for his roomful of students.
What I wish King would ask himself is, what would happen to Mr. Osterweil today? How many of those lessons that King cherishes would be put aside for test prep. How much time would he have to spend teaching the required lessons from the state; would Principal King let Mr. Osterweil set his own program, or would King have the lessons all planned out in detail, first day through last, before Mr. Osterweil even came back from summer break? How stable and nurturing would the class be when Mr. Osterweil had to guide his charges through this week's punishing and demoralizing test. I'd bet that King is confident that Mr. Osterweil would be found highly effective on his modern evaluation, but I'm not so confident. If Mr. Osterweil had the wrong assortment of students, or was unable to use his most effective techniques because Principal King's program didn't allow for them, would it turn out that King's favorite life-saving teacher was rated ineffective?
Just how many more Mr. Osterweil's are out there, and what is Commissioner King doing to make sure that they be the best classroom teachers they can be?
Being White Guys
I'm going to write this companion piece to last night's post about race and gender and then I'm going to set this topic aside (until I don't).
Preamble and Disclaimer
Let me make two points before I start this exercise in gross generalization. These apply to the previous post as well.
1) I cannot possibly speak for everybody in any category and to every person's experience. If you want to point out to me that you know of experiences or persons who don't fit what I'm saying, all I have to say is, "Of course."
2) I am trying to describe how people see, hear or experience certain stuff. I am not trying to evaluate the correctness of those beliefs. In my experience, when you want to talk with someone, it's useful to understand how they see things, period.
Why Are White Guys So Bad At This Conversation
The "privilege" conversation degenerates rapidly every time it comes up in this culture. Why don't we white guys just admit we live in privilege and move the conversation forward?
Because most of us don't feel privileged.
Tell a working class guy who is pulling fifty-sixty hours a week because he wants to grapple with the frustration of not being able to give his children nice things, and who spends those fifty-sixty hours having is every move dictated by the many people who have power over him at work-- tell that guy about his white guy privilege, and he will think you're making a bad joke.
In a school setting, we may feel that we've got the same size classroom, work for the same people, teach the same material.
For some of us, it's not that we want to defend "privilege," or justify it, but that we literally cannot see what the heck you are talking about. And when someone starts talking about "privilege," we hear an accusation, a charge that we somehow cheated by being born white and male, which we feel is unfair because we worked hard to get where we are.
Suck It Up
When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Walk it off. Grab life by the balls. Make it happen. No excuses. The buck stops here.
If life is a mountain to climb, then women and minorities are told that there are certain paths for them to take, areas they are barred from, obstacles they cannot surmount. White guys are shown the mountain and told, "There is no excuse for you not to get to the top. If you don't climb the mountain, it's because you aren't strong enough, focused enough, good enough." For some men, that is exhilarating, and for some it is terrifying.
The flip side of the assumption that women are helpless is the assumption that men, real men, never are. I know more than a couple of strong, capable women who still believe that the procedure for solving problems is
1) Tell a man about it
2) Wait
In schools, this is the staff meeting where the women turn to the man for answers. It's the female teachers who want to get that guy from the union to come fix this problem.
To someone else, it may look as if a white guy lives without an extra set of invisible obstacles, but he may experience that as huge pressure, as a situation where his success or failure all rests on him, and meeting the challenge is a straight-up measure of his worth as a person. And we've raised to think that's how the world works (not how the world works just for white guys). So when other groups start explaining the kinds of cultural obstacles and differences they face, what white guys hear is a list of excuses.
Yes, the no excuses schools, along with much of the reformster movement, are straight out of the white guy world view.
Our Big Blind Spot
White guys overcome obstacles all the time. All the time. Things do not come easily for us, and the success that we experience comes, as near as we can tell, from the exertion of our strength and smarts and willpower and hard work and grit.
And we literally cannot imagine how it would not be possible for any human being to exert their own strength and smarts and willpower and hard work and grit. We do not see that any sort of privilege is involved in being able to use all those tools to create our success. We are kind of like the person who can't understand why clinically depressed people don't just cheer themselves up. Or the teacher who stands in front of a class saying, "Well, just understand it. You're not trying."
Not a Contest
My intent is not to say "Waa! White guys have it tough, too." It's never useful when these conversations devolve into Who Gets Pissed On More contests. But if we're going to have these conversations, we're going to have to stop talking past each other, and that gets easier if we understand where the other person is coming from.
That's particularly true as teachers. As both the teaching pool and the student population diversify, and as American culture itself spreads out into a gazillion subcultures, our ability to reach across those lines becomes critical to our success and the success of our students.
Preamble and Disclaimer
Let me make two points before I start this exercise in gross generalization. These apply to the previous post as well.
1) I cannot possibly speak for everybody in any category and to every person's experience. If you want to point out to me that you know of experiences or persons who don't fit what I'm saying, all I have to say is, "Of course."
2) I am trying to describe how people see, hear or experience certain stuff. I am not trying to evaluate the correctness of those beliefs. In my experience, when you want to talk with someone, it's useful to understand how they see things, period.
Why Are White Guys So Bad At This Conversation
The "privilege" conversation degenerates rapidly every time it comes up in this culture. Why don't we white guys just admit we live in privilege and move the conversation forward?
Because most of us don't feel privileged.
Tell a working class guy who is pulling fifty-sixty hours a week because he wants to grapple with the frustration of not being able to give his children nice things, and who spends those fifty-sixty hours having is every move dictated by the many people who have power over him at work-- tell that guy about his white guy privilege, and he will think you're making a bad joke.
In a school setting, we may feel that we've got the same size classroom, work for the same people, teach the same material.
For some of us, it's not that we want to defend "privilege," or justify it, but that we literally cannot see what the heck you are talking about. And when someone starts talking about "privilege," we hear an accusation, a charge that we somehow cheated by being born white and male, which we feel is unfair because we worked hard to get where we are.
Suck It Up
When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Walk it off. Grab life by the balls. Make it happen. No excuses. The buck stops here.
If life is a mountain to climb, then women and minorities are told that there are certain paths for them to take, areas they are barred from, obstacles they cannot surmount. White guys are shown the mountain and told, "There is no excuse for you not to get to the top. If you don't climb the mountain, it's because you aren't strong enough, focused enough, good enough." For some men, that is exhilarating, and for some it is terrifying.
The flip side of the assumption that women are helpless is the assumption that men, real men, never are. I know more than a couple of strong, capable women who still believe that the procedure for solving problems is
1) Tell a man about it
2) Wait
In schools, this is the staff meeting where the women turn to the man for answers. It's the female teachers who want to get that guy from the union to come fix this problem.
To someone else, it may look as if a white guy lives without an extra set of invisible obstacles, but he may experience that as huge pressure, as a situation where his success or failure all rests on him, and meeting the challenge is a straight-up measure of his worth as a person. And we've raised to think that's how the world works (not how the world works just for white guys). So when other groups start explaining the kinds of cultural obstacles and differences they face, what white guys hear is a list of excuses.
Yes, the no excuses schools, along with much of the reformster movement, are straight out of the white guy world view.
Our Big Blind Spot
White guys overcome obstacles all the time. All the time. Things do not come easily for us, and the success that we experience comes, as near as we can tell, from the exertion of our strength and smarts and willpower and hard work and grit.
And we literally cannot imagine how it would not be possible for any human being to exert their own strength and smarts and willpower and hard work and grit. We do not see that any sort of privilege is involved in being able to use all those tools to create our success. We are kind of like the person who can't understand why clinically depressed people don't just cheer themselves up. Or the teacher who stands in front of a class saying, "Well, just understand it. You're not trying."
Not a Contest
My intent is not to say "Waa! White guys have it tough, too." It's never useful when these conversations devolve into Who Gets Pissed On More contests. But if we're going to have these conversations, we're going to have to stop talking past each other, and that gets easier if we understand where the other person is coming from.
That's particularly true as teachers. As both the teaching pool and the student population diversify, and as American culture itself spreads out into a gazillion subcultures, our ability to reach across those lines becomes critical to our success and the success of our students.
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