Children are the photo prop of choice for conflicts in war zones around the world. Photographic coverage of the Iraqi refugees trapped by Isis activity has been heavy on photographs of children in the camp. Shocking images from Syria have centered on children (upsetting enough that I'm not going to link). And current warfare in Gaza opened with children-centric coverage, to the point that some coverage made it look as if the conflict was primarily about whether Hamas or Israel were the greater offender in the treatment of children.
It's understandable. People have a strong visceral reaction to the sight of children in trouble. If you want to evoke the strongest possible emotional reaction from people, show them a child in trouble. Children are vulnerable, and if a person possesses any basic human decency at all, that person wants to protect children.
Media get that. Doing coverage in a war zone? Get some pictures of children.
Unless, of course, we're talking about American children of color.
18-year-old Michael Brown was quickly upgraded in the media to adult status, referred to repeatedly as a man (and not even a young man at that). He was a recent high school graduate, a promising college freshman-- in short, a young person who could be described in many ways far more sympathetic than the version we've been handed. As twitter was pointing out last night, even crazy James Holmes, the 24-year-old man who shot up a Denver movie theater, was a "brilliant science student" in his coverage (and not just in random coverage-- google his headline and watch it come up all across the continent).
And as any high school teacher would immediately recognize, Michael Brown was undoubtedly still part of his high school community. He would have still been known, been the guy who younger teens knew as one of the "big kids." Any death of a recent high school grad resonates through the students who are still there and about to start the new year. Of course, I have to conjecture about how those specifics play out here, because nobody is covering this.
If Michael Brown had been killed by soldiers in a foreign land, reporters would be looking for the most fresh-faced young underclassman from Brown's school, showing us groups of apprehensive but attractive youngsters and asking, "How can these children cope with a world in which something like this can happen? How will they grow up living with the knowledge of such mortal danger in their own neighborhood streets?" And politicians and leaders would soon appear in the coverage demanding that we take action For The Children.
But Michael Brown was a person of color, a teenager in America, and so, somehow, the coverage of his killing and its aftermath is devoid of any For The Children notes.
That includes, of course, reaction from the reformsters who have been banging the For The Children drum all along. Those who have launched a high profile lawsuit For The Children because they are so concerned that a student might face a bad teacher have not been equally vocal about the possibility that a student might face a bad cop. Those who have repeatedly touted school reform and Common Core as the "civil rights issue of today" have not yet spoken up to note that yesterday's civil rights issues are apparently not entirely settled. They have at least not spoken up to suggest that what Michael Brown and the other children of Ferguson really need is more rigor and grit and high stakes testing.
I don't mean to let the rest of us off the hook. It would be equally wrong to suggest that what the children of Ferguson mostly need is to be freed from the oppression of CCSS. It is tempting to say nothing because I'm aware that, for the most part, I literally would not know what I was talking about. In so many ways, I live a million miles away from Ferguson (though it should be noted that Ferguson is a working class neighborhood, not an urban slum).
But I can't say nothing. What happened in Ferguson, what is still happening in Ferguson, is so obviously effed up. It may be more complicated and complex than we can tell out here through the filter of main stream and social media, but I don't need to know that when an unarmed young man is shot to death, that's effed up. When children grow up in a setting, in America, where it's just good practical common sense daily survival behavior to approach police modifying your own behavior to minimize their threat, that's effed up. When children need to be taught how to properly raise their hands and act non-threatening when approached by the policemen who are paid to protect those children, that's effed up. And when police act like a small army facing a real war with a real opposing army, that's effed up.
I will go back to writing about education stuff, because that's what I know and that's what I do. But I do so remembering and reminding myself that our children and our schools in some communities face some huge issues that dwarf the latest stupid press release from comfortably wealthy high-income folks.
We all, on all the sides of the education debates, like to say we're in this for the children. But if we are going to be for the children, we have to look at the challenges that the children have to face, not just the child-related issues that we prefer to focus on. There are other Fergusons out there, each one with its own schools and children. There's a lot of work to do.
Thursday, August 14, 2014
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Dear Campbell Brown:
Today you made an appearance in Valerie Strauss's blog to respond to your many critics. I want to take a moment to respond to some of your questions.
First, let me applaud you for taking the dialogue directly to your critics, rather than simply trashing or dismissing them elsewhere. Direct dialogue between the various sides of the ed debates (there are more than two) is rare and needed. I'm going to treat your post as written in good faith and respond in kind.
We want a system that supports, protects and properly pays good teachers and makes it possible, in a responsible, fair and timely way, to remove teachers judged to be incompetent.
I don't think anybody disagrees with that goal. Certainly not anybody in the teaching profession. The devil, as I'm sure you realize, is in the details.
So was that ruling an attack on all teachers? Of course not. Was it a new way to help ensure that substandard teaching is never sanctioned in California schools? Yes.
I disagree on both questions. The ruling did not remove tenure laws for bad teachers. It removed them for all teachers. And the irony is that it won't insure that a bad teacher never darkens the door of a California classroom. Enforcement of teacher standards will still be up to administrators-- the same people who don't take the necessary steps to remove the worst teachers under tenure rules (and of course those policies existed, because tenure was never, ever, a "job for life") will continue to not take those steps under the new set of rules.
But awarding added tenure protection to someone with no record of improving student achievement “doesn’t respect the craft of teaching, and it doesn’t serve children well.” The idea of connecting quality on the job to whether teachers essentially get to keep their jobs indefinitely is hardly radical.
Here is another crux of the problem. Connecting quality on the job to teacher employment might be great-- if we knew how to measure quality on the job. We don't.
Secretary Duncan glibly defines it as "improving student achievement"-- in other words, test scores. Do we really agree, as a nation, that student test scores are the ultimate measure of teacher quality? When we adults think back on our favorite teachers, our best teachers, the teachers who shaped us as people-- do we think about how we did better on standardized tests because of them?
Do we really want to set the bar so incredibly low? Do we want to say, "I don't care what else you do in that classroom as long as the standardized test scores are good."
If not (and how could it be otherwise) how will we measure all the rest? Teachers are not opposed to evaluations or feedback, but every evaluative measure on the table right now is, to be blunt, crap. VAM and all of its variations have been debunked repeatedly. We welcome meaningful, helpful evaluation, but we do not welcome having our careers linked to instruments no more precise and valid than tea leaves or a roll of the dice.
The parents who put their names and reputations on this suit know their schools have caring, dependable, inspiring teachers – and that is not their worry.
It should be. Because without tenure, those caring, dependable, inspiring teachers (all qualities, incidentally, that are not measured by looking at "improving student achievement) can be fired. More importantly, they can be threatened with firing. When their caring leads them to say things like "You are treating this student unfairly" or "that policy will hurt my kids" or "I will not implement a program that is so damaging to my the students in my care," they may have to deal with the reply, "Shut up, or lose your job."
I've written plenty about this. Firing is not nearly as damaging to a school as the threat of firing. And tenure helps teachers avoid the problems of having a hundred different bosses with different ideas of success. I'm not going to go into those at length here.
So here is the question for critics: What would you do if your child had those teachers [the ones who don't do their jobs] in class? Nothing? Attack the motives of people trying to do something? Cast the effort as anti-teacher when in fact it is designed to get more good teachers?
None of the above. I would contact the teacher, the principal, the superintendent, in that order. I would talk to other parents (because I may or may not be the only person who thinks the teacher isn't doing her job). I would raise a stink if I thought I needed to. Because here's the thing-- under a tenure system like the system in New York, that teacher can absolutely be fired. I would not walk through the halls of that building, knock on each teacher's door and say, "Excuse me, but I need to be able to take away your job so that I can get rid of Mrs. McSuxalot."
One of the things that is maddening from my side of this issue is the repeated assurance that the Vergara lawsuit, and now yours, will help get more good teachers in the classroom. How? How will that work? I understand the "We'll fire Mrs. Suxalot quickly and easily" part. But how will you replace her? Who will you entice with a come-on of "We'd like you to do this job for now, but we reserve the right to fire you any time we feel like it for whatever reason occurs to us, including finding someone younger and prettier." That recruiting technique doesn't get any better if you switch to "Your employment will be based strictly on student test scores."
How will your law result in more good teachers in classrooms? This question has not yet been answered. Not even a little. If you want to build some credibility, come up with a credible answer for it.
Actually, no one is playing a card. No one is playing a game. This is for real. And if you are going to take a stand, perhaps the best one possible is the one good for the child.
I agree. You can probably assume that those of us who have decided to devote our entire adult lives to teaching as a career are also not playing games. It will help the dialogue if you understand that we are, in fact, taking a stand based on the good of the children (there's not just one, but many, with many needs and strengths and weaknesses).
Removing employment protection removes our ability to advocate for children, to speak up against the system when we see it doing the wrong thing, to make decisions based on the best interests of the students-- and nothing else. Removing these protections makes it harder still to recruit the best people to the classroom. Teachers want to remove people from the classroom who should not be there (and quickly), as well as helping those who could improve to do so.
But nothing in your lawsuit suggests a way that your legal case would help that. And while these issues are far bigger than the individuals who are involved, the fact that your suit is backed by people who have a huge stake in dismantling public education in order to replace it with a more profitable charter system does not makes us feel better about it.
You've disseminated your talking points pretty clearly at this point, and those of us out in the cheap seats have pointed out repeatedly where the gaps in your argument lie. Simple repetition will not move the conversation forward. You need to fill in those gaps if your claims to concern about students and education are to be taken seriously.
First, let me applaud you for taking the dialogue directly to your critics, rather than simply trashing or dismissing them elsewhere. Direct dialogue between the various sides of the ed debates (there are more than two) is rare and needed. I'm going to treat your post as written in good faith and respond in kind.
We want a system that supports, protects and properly pays good teachers and makes it possible, in a responsible, fair and timely way, to remove teachers judged to be incompetent.
I don't think anybody disagrees with that goal. Certainly not anybody in the teaching profession. The devil, as I'm sure you realize, is in the details.
So was that ruling an attack on all teachers? Of course not. Was it a new way to help ensure that substandard teaching is never sanctioned in California schools? Yes.
I disagree on both questions. The ruling did not remove tenure laws for bad teachers. It removed them for all teachers. And the irony is that it won't insure that a bad teacher never darkens the door of a California classroom. Enforcement of teacher standards will still be up to administrators-- the same people who don't take the necessary steps to remove the worst teachers under tenure rules (and of course those policies existed, because tenure was never, ever, a "job for life") will continue to not take those steps under the new set of rules.
But awarding added tenure protection to someone with no record of improving student achievement “doesn’t respect the craft of teaching, and it doesn’t serve children well.” The idea of connecting quality on the job to whether teachers essentially get to keep their jobs indefinitely is hardly radical.
Here is another crux of the problem. Connecting quality on the job to teacher employment might be great-- if we knew how to measure quality on the job. We don't.
Secretary Duncan glibly defines it as "improving student achievement"-- in other words, test scores. Do we really agree, as a nation, that student test scores are the ultimate measure of teacher quality? When we adults think back on our favorite teachers, our best teachers, the teachers who shaped us as people-- do we think about how we did better on standardized tests because of them?
Do we really want to set the bar so incredibly low? Do we want to say, "I don't care what else you do in that classroom as long as the standardized test scores are good."
If not (and how could it be otherwise) how will we measure all the rest? Teachers are not opposed to evaluations or feedback, but every evaluative measure on the table right now is, to be blunt, crap. VAM and all of its variations have been debunked repeatedly. We welcome meaningful, helpful evaluation, but we do not welcome having our careers linked to instruments no more precise and valid than tea leaves or a roll of the dice.
The parents who put their names and reputations on this suit know their schools have caring, dependable, inspiring teachers – and that is not their worry.
It should be. Because without tenure, those caring, dependable, inspiring teachers (all qualities, incidentally, that are not measured by looking at "improving student achievement) can be fired. More importantly, they can be threatened with firing. When their caring leads them to say things like "You are treating this student unfairly" or "that policy will hurt my kids" or "I will not implement a program that is so damaging to my the students in my care," they may have to deal with the reply, "Shut up, or lose your job."
I've written plenty about this. Firing is not nearly as damaging to a school as the threat of firing. And tenure helps teachers avoid the problems of having a hundred different bosses with different ideas of success. I'm not going to go into those at length here.
So here is the question for critics: What would you do if your child had those teachers [the ones who don't do their jobs] in class? Nothing? Attack the motives of people trying to do something? Cast the effort as anti-teacher when in fact it is designed to get more good teachers?
None of the above. I would contact the teacher, the principal, the superintendent, in that order. I would talk to other parents (because I may or may not be the only person who thinks the teacher isn't doing her job). I would raise a stink if I thought I needed to. Because here's the thing-- under a tenure system like the system in New York, that teacher can absolutely be fired. I would not walk through the halls of that building, knock on each teacher's door and say, "Excuse me, but I need to be able to take away your job so that I can get rid of Mrs. McSuxalot."
One of the things that is maddening from my side of this issue is the repeated assurance that the Vergara lawsuit, and now yours, will help get more good teachers in the classroom. How? How will that work? I understand the "We'll fire Mrs. Suxalot quickly and easily" part. But how will you replace her? Who will you entice with a come-on of "We'd like you to do this job for now, but we reserve the right to fire you any time we feel like it for whatever reason occurs to us, including finding someone younger and prettier." That recruiting technique doesn't get any better if you switch to "Your employment will be based strictly on student test scores."
How will your law result in more good teachers in classrooms? This question has not yet been answered. Not even a little. If you want to build some credibility, come up with a credible answer for it.
Actually, no one is playing a card. No one is playing a game. This is for real. And if you are going to take a stand, perhaps the best one possible is the one good for the child.
I agree. You can probably assume that those of us who have decided to devote our entire adult lives to teaching as a career are also not playing games. It will help the dialogue if you understand that we are, in fact, taking a stand based on the good of the children (there's not just one, but many, with many needs and strengths and weaknesses).
Removing employment protection removes our ability to advocate for children, to speak up against the system when we see it doing the wrong thing, to make decisions based on the best interests of the students-- and nothing else. Removing these protections makes it harder still to recruit the best people to the classroom. Teachers want to remove people from the classroom who should not be there (and quickly), as well as helping those who could improve to do so.
But nothing in your lawsuit suggests a way that your legal case would help that. And while these issues are far bigger than the individuals who are involved, the fact that your suit is backed by people who have a huge stake in dismantling public education in order to replace it with a more profitable charter system does not makes us feel better about it.
You've disseminated your talking points pretty clearly at this point, and those of us out in the cheap seats have pointed out repeatedly where the gaps in your argument lie. Simple repetition will not move the conversation forward. You need to fill in those gaps if your claims to concern about students and education are to be taken seriously.
Duncan Funnels Millions to College Board
This is how it works in our current form of government.
Suppose you make left-handed widgets. You are a major player in the market, but you do have competitors. You would like to both cement your role in the market while growing your share of the revenue. What do you do? Well, you could work on marketing, product development, basically making your case to the potential left-handed widget market.
Or you could get the feds involved.
You could use focused marketing, gamesmanship, or plain old cronyism to convince the feds to say, "We are going to address the shameful left-handed widget gap in this country by helping citizens purchase left-handed widgets from WidgetCorp." The feds aren't going to just buy the widgets direct from WidgetCorps and hand them out-- that would be socialism or corporate welfare or something Very Naughty to do with tax dollars. So instead the feds will launder the money through a grant program run by the states, and it won't be obvious that the federal government just handed WidgetCorps a giant windfall.
That's the cushy gig that's been set up for the College Board.
Tuesday, the Department of Education proudly announced its AP Test grant program. Forty states, DC and the Virgin Islands will be handing over $28.4 million to the College Board so that low-income students can take the AP test.
I will remind everyone, as I always do, that the College Board (home of the AP test and the SATs) is not a philanthropic organization, administering these tests as some sort of public service. They are a business, one of several similar ones, selling a product. This program is the equivalent of the feds saying, "Students really need to be able to drive a Ford to school, so we we're going to finance the purchase of Fords for some students."
What does the College Board get out of this program?
Huge product placement. David Coleman's College Board has been working hard to market the AP test as the go-to proof that a student is on the college path. Some states (PA is one) give extra points to school evaluation scores based on the number of AP courses offered. The new PSAT will become an AP-recommendation generator. This program is one more tap-tap-tap in the drumbeat that if you want to go to college, you must hit the AP. The program can also be directed toward IB tests or "other approved advanced placement tests," but it's the AP brand that is on the marquee.
The product placement represents a savvy marketing end run. The AP biz has previously depended on the kindness of colleges to push their product. But colleges and universities weren't really working all that hard to market the College Board's product for them. Now, with the help of state and federal governments and their own PSAT test, the College Board is marketing directly to parents and students, tapping into that same must-go-to-college gut-level terror that makes the SAT test the must-take test.
$28.4 million.
What do low-income students get out of this?
A chance to take an AP test. Not, mind you, more resources to get ready for it, nor do they get help with actually going to a college after taking the test (which may or may not give them any help once they get in).
"These grants eliminate some of the financial roadblocks for low-income students taking Advanced Placement courses, letting them take tests with the potential of earning college credit while in high school," said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
"Potential" is the key word. Check with your chosen college; benefits for getting a high score on an AP test may range from dollar savings all the way down to no benefit whatsoever. And note that the grant program doesn't foot the whole bill.
Here are some things the DOE did not announce.
Arne did not announce that the government of the United States of America went to a private corporation and said, "Look, we'll give your product a little boost here, but in return, you are going to give up 65% of your profit margin on your product." Damn, guys. If you come buy $28 million worth of widgets from me, I will give you a bulk discount. Do not try to tell me that the price of an AP test is set strictly by the cost of producing it and not by what the market will bear.
Arne did not announce that the federal government will be cutting low-income students the same kind of loan deals for college tuition that they cut the big banks. Want to eliminate a financial roadblock for low-income students looking at college? Lowering the interest rate on student and parent plus loans to, say, 2.5% would be a huge financial help.
In fact, if we go back to last year's stories about the money that the feds made from college loans, we find that this new program basically takes about 6% of the DOE's college loan profits and hands it over to the testing companies (at, apparently, retail prices, no less). In return, low-income students get to take a test that may or may not help them with college.
There are other imponderables here. California is getting almost a third ($10 million) of the total funds while Montana makes do with $4K.
Helping low income students get into college (and succeed there) is a noble and worthwhile goal. But if you had $28 million to spend to make that happen, I doubt that this is the program you'd come up with. On the other hand, if you were trying to find a way to pump up the College Board's AP business, this would be a dandy idea.
Suppose you make left-handed widgets. You are a major player in the market, but you do have competitors. You would like to both cement your role in the market while growing your share of the revenue. What do you do? Well, you could work on marketing, product development, basically making your case to the potential left-handed widget market.
Or you could get the feds involved.
You could use focused marketing, gamesmanship, or plain old cronyism to convince the feds to say, "We are going to address the shameful left-handed widget gap in this country by helping citizens purchase left-handed widgets from WidgetCorp." The feds aren't going to just buy the widgets direct from WidgetCorps and hand them out-- that would be socialism or corporate welfare or something Very Naughty to do with tax dollars. So instead the feds will launder the money through a grant program run by the states, and it won't be obvious that the federal government just handed WidgetCorps a giant windfall.
That's the cushy gig that's been set up for the College Board.
Tuesday, the Department of Education proudly announced its AP Test grant program. Forty states, DC and the Virgin Islands will be handing over $28.4 million to the College Board so that low-income students can take the AP test.
I will remind everyone, as I always do, that the College Board (home of the AP test and the SATs) is not a philanthropic organization, administering these tests as some sort of public service. They are a business, one of several similar ones, selling a product. This program is the equivalent of the feds saying, "Students really need to be able to drive a Ford to school, so we we're going to finance the purchase of Fords for some students."
What does the College Board get out of this program?
Huge product placement. David Coleman's College Board has been working hard to market the AP test as the go-to proof that a student is on the college path. Some states (PA is one) give extra points to school evaluation scores based on the number of AP courses offered. The new PSAT will become an AP-recommendation generator. This program is one more tap-tap-tap in the drumbeat that if you want to go to college, you must hit the AP. The program can also be directed toward IB tests or "other approved advanced placement tests," but it's the AP brand that is on the marquee.
The product placement represents a savvy marketing end run. The AP biz has previously depended on the kindness of colleges to push their product. But colleges and universities weren't really working all that hard to market the College Board's product for them. Now, with the help of state and federal governments and their own PSAT test, the College Board is marketing directly to parents and students, tapping into that same must-go-to-college gut-level terror that makes the SAT test the must-take test.
$28.4 million.
What do low-income students get out of this?
A chance to take an AP test. Not, mind you, more resources to get ready for it, nor do they get help with actually going to a college after taking the test (which may or may not give them any help once they get in).
"These grants eliminate some of the financial roadblocks for low-income students taking Advanced Placement courses, letting them take tests with the potential of earning college credit while in high school," said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
"Potential" is the key word. Check with your chosen college; benefits for getting a high score on an AP test may range from dollar savings all the way down to no benefit whatsoever. And note that the grant program doesn't foot the whole bill.
Here are some things the DOE did not announce.
Arne did not announce that the government of the United States of America went to a private corporation and said, "Look, we'll give your product a little boost here, but in return, you are going to give up 65% of your profit margin on your product." Damn, guys. If you come buy $28 million worth of widgets from me, I will give you a bulk discount. Do not try to tell me that the price of an AP test is set strictly by the cost of producing it and not by what the market will bear.
Arne did not announce that the federal government will be cutting low-income students the same kind of loan deals for college tuition that they cut the big banks. Want to eliminate a financial roadblock for low-income students looking at college? Lowering the interest rate on student and parent plus loans to, say, 2.5% would be a huge financial help.
In fact, if we go back to last year's stories about the money that the feds made from college loans, we find that this new program basically takes about 6% of the DOE's college loan profits and hands it over to the testing companies (at, apparently, retail prices, no less). In return, low-income students get to take a test that may or may not help them with college.
There are other imponderables here. California is getting almost a third ($10 million) of the total funds while Montana makes do with $4K.
Helping low income students get into college (and succeed there) is a noble and worthwhile goal. But if you had $28 million to spend to make that happen, I doubt that this is the program you'd come up with. On the other hand, if you were trying to find a way to pump up the College Board's AP business, this would be a dandy idea.
Dear Michelle
Dear Michelle
Well, we both knew this day would come. I never thought your love affair with education was a forever thing, but it still hurts to see that you've found a new flame. I know you'll still have a hand in education in a small way, but it won't be the same, will it.
I stopped using your full name here months ago for a couple of reasons. For one, it seemed like the worst kind of clickbait, like posting a picture of Lindsay Lohan holding a puppy next to a blazing fire and headlining it, "You'll never believe what happens next!" My other reason, I guess, is that as a classroom teacher, the only thing that I could withhold from you was one more ounce of fame. But now you appear uncertain about what name you want to use yourself.
I wish I could say that you were never interesting to me at all, but in fact I've found your career kind of fascinating. As near as I can tell, you have literally never succeeded at anything in education. Your TFA stint was a bust (as they are, of course, designed to be). Your time as DC Chancellor barely looked like some form of success while it was going on, and time has only wiped away what little patina of achievement there might have been. Your advocacy groups, like StudentsFirst and TNTP, have failed to gain any serious credibility in the education world, and they never raised the kind of big funds that were promised.
You have been a living mockery of meritocracy, a sign of a world where failure in your last job is no impediment to moving up the next rung on the ladder of success.
So how did you do it? You did manage to provoke the right kind of controversy-- every time you pissed off teachers and other friends of public education, the enemies of public education and other reformsters assumed that you must have done something right. You yourself took the stance that feather-ruffling was a better metric of success than actual results. It has been impossible for me to take you seriously, and at times impossible to ignore you as well. The anonymous source in HuffPost's coverage of your departure probably captured another part of your success: "the power of this movement has been that this is a Democratic teacher of color, and so the ability of the traditionalists to write all this off as billionaire white male Republicans was very, very hard to do when Michelle had the profile that she did."
Why are you leaving us? It's hard to know. Maybe your husband needs some extra help with his own problems. Maybe you've actually run out of hills to climb in education. Maybe, like a Teach for America alum on a grander scale, you have merely used education as a launching pad for your real career, and you're ready to begin.
I suppose it's even possible that this isn't your choice. There are a lot of rich and powerful people behind StudentsFirst in particular and the reformster agenda in general. Your own husband runs with the kind of guys who topple governments just to make a buck. So maybe they've decided that it's time to refresh the brand by replacing you with Campbell Brown. Maybe Miracle-Gro is not your next career, but your pension plan.
Maybe education was providing too few rewards and too much tempest. People have called you some awful names and said some terrible personal things about you, and though I have called you the Kim Kardashian of education, I don't condone or support the ugly personal attacks that are following you out the door. But I understand them-- you have done some awful, awful things, and I'm not sure that it's ever seemed, from out here in the cheap seats, that you understand that teachers and students are real, live human beings and not simply props for whatever publicity moment you are staging. I'm not saying that you deserve the invective being hurled at you; I am saying that when you poke a bear in the face repeatedly, it eventually gets up and takes a bite out of you.
I do not hope that a meteorite lands on you or that a sinkhole swallows you up or that you end up as a Wal-mart greeter. But I am glad to see you go, even a little bit. You have championed some of the worst ideas in education and have worked hard to destroy the foundations of public education in this country. You have been wrong about pretty much everything, but like other marquee reformers, you have been wrong on a large, national stage, and public education has been damaged because of you.
I have no idea whether you are a horrible person or not. But you have been the public face of some horrible ideas, and you have collected money and backing for horrible changes in public education. You have deliberately and ambitiously made this country a worse place. You have used top-notch pitch-person skills to sell horrible programs through nothing-- not evidence, not research, not a track record of success-- but the sheer force of your personality, amassing personal fame and fortune in the process.
So I'm glad to read that you and education are breaking up. You were bad for education, and it will be better off without you. Good luck in your new endeavors; may they take you far away from American schools. Have a good life, and don't be a stranger.
Well, we both knew this day would come. I never thought your love affair with education was a forever thing, but it still hurts to see that you've found a new flame. I know you'll still have a hand in education in a small way, but it won't be the same, will it.
I stopped using your full name here months ago for a couple of reasons. For one, it seemed like the worst kind of clickbait, like posting a picture of Lindsay Lohan holding a puppy next to a blazing fire and headlining it, "You'll never believe what happens next!" My other reason, I guess, is that as a classroom teacher, the only thing that I could withhold from you was one more ounce of fame. But now you appear uncertain about what name you want to use yourself.
I wish I could say that you were never interesting to me at all, but in fact I've found your career kind of fascinating. As near as I can tell, you have literally never succeeded at anything in education. Your TFA stint was a bust (as they are, of course, designed to be). Your time as DC Chancellor barely looked like some form of success while it was going on, and time has only wiped away what little patina of achievement there might have been. Your advocacy groups, like StudentsFirst and TNTP, have failed to gain any serious credibility in the education world, and they never raised the kind of big funds that were promised.
You have been a living mockery of meritocracy, a sign of a world where failure in your last job is no impediment to moving up the next rung on the ladder of success.
So how did you do it? You did manage to provoke the right kind of controversy-- every time you pissed off teachers and other friends of public education, the enemies of public education and other reformsters assumed that you must have done something right. You yourself took the stance that feather-ruffling was a better metric of success than actual results. It has been impossible for me to take you seriously, and at times impossible to ignore you as well. The anonymous source in HuffPost's coverage of your departure probably captured another part of your success: "the power of this movement has been that this is a Democratic teacher of color, and so the ability of the traditionalists to write all this off as billionaire white male Republicans was very, very hard to do when Michelle had the profile that she did."
Why are you leaving us? It's hard to know. Maybe your husband needs some extra help with his own problems. Maybe you've actually run out of hills to climb in education. Maybe, like a Teach for America alum on a grander scale, you have merely used education as a launching pad for your real career, and you're ready to begin.
I suppose it's even possible that this isn't your choice. There are a lot of rich and powerful people behind StudentsFirst in particular and the reformster agenda in general. Your own husband runs with the kind of guys who topple governments just to make a buck. So maybe they've decided that it's time to refresh the brand by replacing you with Campbell Brown. Maybe Miracle-Gro is not your next career, but your pension plan.
Maybe education was providing too few rewards and too much tempest. People have called you some awful names and said some terrible personal things about you, and though I have called you the Kim Kardashian of education, I don't condone or support the ugly personal attacks that are following you out the door. But I understand them-- you have done some awful, awful things, and I'm not sure that it's ever seemed, from out here in the cheap seats, that you understand that teachers and students are real, live human beings and not simply props for whatever publicity moment you are staging. I'm not saying that you deserve the invective being hurled at you; I am saying that when you poke a bear in the face repeatedly, it eventually gets up and takes a bite out of you.
I do not hope that a meteorite lands on you or that a sinkhole swallows you up or that you end up as a Wal-mart greeter. But I am glad to see you go, even a little bit. You have championed some of the worst ideas in education and have worked hard to destroy the foundations of public education in this country. You have been wrong about pretty much everything, but like other marquee reformers, you have been wrong on a large, national stage, and public education has been damaged because of you.
I have no idea whether you are a horrible person or not. But you have been the public face of some horrible ideas, and you have collected money and backing for horrible changes in public education. You have deliberately and ambitiously made this country a worse place. You have used top-notch pitch-person skills to sell horrible programs through nothing-- not evidence, not research, not a track record of success-- but the sheer force of your personality, amassing personal fame and fortune in the process.
So I'm glad to read that you and education are breaking up. You were bad for education, and it will be better off without you. Good luck in your new endeavors; may they take you far away from American schools. Have a good life, and don't be a stranger.
Sunday, August 10, 2014
The 21st Century Teacher
If reformsters get their full laundry list of school system rewrites, the 21st Century teacher will be a very different animal from her 20th Century counterpart.
* She will be paid little. If she sticks around, she will either face stagnant wages or her wage increases will put her in danger of being fired.
* Her one real chance to make some extra money (and to keep her job) will be to get her students to produce high test scores. Most of her attention will be focused on that.
* She will not be a lifer. She'll be teaching for just a few years before she can move on to her "real" job. Even if she falls in love with the work, she will still likely have a short career. She may be forced out by financial issues (see above) or she will be fired before she can become either vested in the retirement system or too experienced and vocal to be tolerated.
* She will not have a teaching pension. There won't be much money in the pension fund anyway, but she'll never see it because she won't be teaching long enough.
* She will not have a teaching degree. She may not even have a college degree at all. She will have been trained briefly over the first summer before she started work. This will not matter because...
* She will not design her own instruction. She will be handed a program, some templates, some materials, maybe even a script.
* She will likely have a Master Teacher mentor. Her MTM will be responsible for looking over her shoulder, answering her questions, "modeling" teaching for her, and generally backseat driving. Every building will have a handful of these actual teachers, many of whom are actually paid pretty well. However, the burnout rate will be pretty high, and by later in the 21st Century Master Teachers will come from the ranks of the new teacher cohorts, and therefor know nothing more about teaching than anyone else in the building.
* At the end of every year, she will say goodbye to many of her colleagues, and every fall she will welcome a new batch of newbies. She will never develop very useful collegial relationships because nobody will be around long enough to do so.
* In addition to low pay, she will also have no tenure or due process of any sort, nor will seniority exist as a layoff consideration. She can be let go at any time for any reason.
* She will be easily fireable and easily replaceable. She will keep her mouth shut and her head down. When a principal directs her to perform educational malpractice, even if she recognizes that's what it is, she will do it anyway, because she needs the paycheck. The motto of the 21st century teacher is "Don't rock the boat ever." She will have no power to advocate for her students.
* With no job security, no autonomy, low pay, and a general lack of respect, teaching was only appealing to her because A) she's idealistic or B) she couldn't find better work.
* She will be a low-skill, low-cost, highly replaceable cog in a big machine. She will not be a bad person, but she will be adrift in an institution that offers her little real help to do a job for which she has little real training, and she will have a damned hard time doing the job well, as much as she may want to. Her one consolation will be that the job won't be hers for long.
* She will be paid little. If she sticks around, she will either face stagnant wages or her wage increases will put her in danger of being fired.
* Her one real chance to make some extra money (and to keep her job) will be to get her students to produce high test scores. Most of her attention will be focused on that.
* She will not be a lifer. She'll be teaching for just a few years before she can move on to her "real" job. Even if she falls in love with the work, she will still likely have a short career. She may be forced out by financial issues (see above) or she will be fired before she can become either vested in the retirement system or too experienced and vocal to be tolerated.
* She will not have a teaching pension. There won't be much money in the pension fund anyway, but she'll never see it because she won't be teaching long enough.
* She will not have a teaching degree. She may not even have a college degree at all. She will have been trained briefly over the first summer before she started work. This will not matter because...
* She will not design her own instruction. She will be handed a program, some templates, some materials, maybe even a script.
* She will likely have a Master Teacher mentor. Her MTM will be responsible for looking over her shoulder, answering her questions, "modeling" teaching for her, and generally backseat driving. Every building will have a handful of these actual teachers, many of whom are actually paid pretty well. However, the burnout rate will be pretty high, and by later in the 21st Century Master Teachers will come from the ranks of the new teacher cohorts, and therefor know nothing more about teaching than anyone else in the building.
* At the end of every year, she will say goodbye to many of her colleagues, and every fall she will welcome a new batch of newbies. She will never develop very useful collegial relationships because nobody will be around long enough to do so.
* In addition to low pay, she will also have no tenure or due process of any sort, nor will seniority exist as a layoff consideration. She can be let go at any time for any reason.
* She will be easily fireable and easily replaceable. She will keep her mouth shut and her head down. When a principal directs her to perform educational malpractice, even if she recognizes that's what it is, she will do it anyway, because she needs the paycheck. The motto of the 21st century teacher is "Don't rock the boat ever." She will have no power to advocate for her students.
* With no job security, no autonomy, low pay, and a general lack of respect, teaching was only appealing to her because A) she's idealistic or B) she couldn't find better work.
* She will be a low-skill, low-cost, highly replaceable cog in a big machine. She will not be a bad person, but she will be adrift in an institution that offers her little real help to do a job for which she has little real training, and she will have a damned hard time doing the job well, as much as she may want to. Her one consolation will be that the job won't be hers for long.
Saturday, August 9, 2014
Zip Codes and Schools
In the Washington Post, Neerav Kingsland writes about The Cost of Neighborhood Schools. Kingsland is specifically addressing the pushback on a DC plan to move away from the neighborhood school model toward something more New Orleans-y (Kingsland is the former chief executive for the New Schools in New Orleans).
Advocates, therefore, worry that communities would be weakened if students from across the city enrolled in neighborhood schools. They worry about long early-morning commutes. And they worry about predictability: In severing the connection between property and school enrollment, buying a house would no longer guarantee access to a nearby school.
As one parent said recently in The Post, “Predictability is much greater than choice in terms of importance. That way you can plan.”
Kingsland acknowledges all of these as legitimate concerns. But Kingsland wonders is these are worth leaving children in poor neighborhoods trapped in poor neighborhood schools.
That is also a legitimate concern. But I'm immediately reminded of the John Hopkins study that tracked children over 25 years. The findings of that study were that family and money are a strong factor in determining the future success of students. What's more valuable to note is the mechanism through which those factors exerted influence-- community cohesion.
Students from a poor background lacked a network of support, a community of connections that could help rescue them from missteps and poor choices. One data point-- rich white men and poor African American men used drugs at similar rates and were arrested for it at similar rates, but the well-to-do whites still found good work because they had connections.
Community cohesion creates a safety net for people (the same kind of safety net that many folks would rather not see the government responsible for). That seems to me to have large implications for New Orleans style reforms intent on dispersing students across a wide network of choice schools.
We've tried many solutions to the problems of schools that are underfunded and lack resources. We move the students around. We close the schools and re-open different ones (often outside that same neighborhood). Does it not make sense to move resources? We keep trying to fix things so that the poor students aren't all in the poor schools-- would it not more completely solve the problem to commit to insuring that there are no poor schools?
Doesn't that make sense? If the neighborhood school is not poor-- if it has a well-maintained physical plant, great resources, a full range of programs, and well-trained teachers (not some faux teachers who spent five weeks at summer camp)-- does that not solve the problem while allowing the students to enjoy the benefits of a more cohesive community?
Community and neighborhood schools have the power to be engines for stability and growth in their zip code. Instead of declaring that we must help students escape the schools in certain zip codes, why not fix the schools in that zip code so that nobody needs to escape them?
Advocates, therefore, worry that communities would be weakened if students from across the city enrolled in neighborhood schools. They worry about long early-morning commutes. And they worry about predictability: In severing the connection between property and school enrollment, buying a house would no longer guarantee access to a nearby school.
As one parent said recently in The Post, “Predictability is much greater than choice in terms of importance. That way you can plan.”
Kingsland acknowledges all of these as legitimate concerns. But Kingsland wonders is these are worth leaving children in poor neighborhoods trapped in poor neighborhood schools.
That is also a legitimate concern. But I'm immediately reminded of the John Hopkins study that tracked children over 25 years. The findings of that study were that family and money are a strong factor in determining the future success of students. What's more valuable to note is the mechanism through which those factors exerted influence-- community cohesion.
Students from a poor background lacked a network of support, a community of connections that could help rescue them from missteps and poor choices. One data point-- rich white men and poor African American men used drugs at similar rates and were arrested for it at similar rates, but the well-to-do whites still found good work because they had connections.
Community cohesion creates a safety net for people (the same kind of safety net that many folks would rather not see the government responsible for). That seems to me to have large implications for New Orleans style reforms intent on dispersing students across a wide network of choice schools.
We've tried many solutions to the problems of schools that are underfunded and lack resources. We move the students around. We close the schools and re-open different ones (often outside that same neighborhood). Does it not make sense to move resources? We keep trying to fix things so that the poor students aren't all in the poor schools-- would it not more completely solve the problem to commit to insuring that there are no poor schools?
Doesn't that make sense? If the neighborhood school is not poor-- if it has a well-maintained physical plant, great resources, a full range of programs, and well-trained teachers (not some faux teachers who spent five weeks at summer camp)-- does that not solve the problem while allowing the students to enjoy the benefits of a more cohesive community?
Community and neighborhood schools have the power to be engines for stability and growth in their zip code. Instead of declaring that we must help students escape the schools in certain zip codes, why not fix the schools in that zip code so that nobody needs to escape them?
Unity
Unity is hard.
When leaders of a group start by saying, "We need to be sure we have total unity on this," the rest of the sentence is almost never "and so we are going to sit down with you and really listen to your concerns and ideas." No, generally a call for unity within a group comes with some diplomatically-worded version of "so shut up and get in line."
It's understandable. Groups, particularly groups that are focused on activism and Getting Things Done and Standing Up To The Man on Behalf of Our Members, really do accomplish more when they present a united front. The easiest way to render your opposition ineffective is to get them busy fighting with each other (like, say, getting people who might be unhappy with crooked rich people to focus their attention on teacher pension costs instead).
It's another example of the seduction of means that seem justified by the ends. "If we can get all the members lined up behind these goals," the reasoning goes, "then we will accomplish great things for them. So anything we do to get them lined up is okay." And that is how union leaders end up lying to their own members. "If we let a few outliers stir things up, it will distract from our mission," is how we get to the ironic spectacle of a group dedicated to giving teachers a voice in the ed reforms debate telling some teachers to shut up.
If you add personal ego to that, it only makes things worse. I have advised many, many student groups over the years, and every few years I hear the argument, "Look, we're getting really good things done as officers right now, so why not just extend our term and not have elections. If we elect someone else, they'll just mess things up."
I don't think lust for power ("I want to rule everything!") damages groups nearly as often as well-intentioned ego ("I'm the only one who can get us through these tough times, so I'd better hold onto the power to do that!")
Unions get crazy messed up with this stuff. NEA and all the sub-EAs stage manage meetings and votes more tightly than a college band halftime show. People can rise through the ranks-- as long as they prove that they're the Right Kind of People and pass all their litmus tests on the way up. And this year I've been reading repeatedly about some of the bizarre practices of the AFT, including loyalty oaths and groups whose rules against speaking out are far tighter than any school district's every thought of being.
I've been a union local president. I totally get the frustration that comes with That Guy (every single group has one) who wants to argue about stupid things or who demands that his quirky idea be considered or (least favorite) wants to argue about decisions made at long meetings he couldn't bother to attend. But if you're not careful, you will find that your group, formed to represent the concerns of individual members, expends enormous energy suppressing those individual voices. The BATs group is one of the most valuable new organizations to pop up in the education landscape, but it occasionally responds to dissent or disagreement with a blunt "If you don't like it, leave. We don't need you." That's embarrassing and indefensible.
Unity in a group comes from listening to the whole group. Leadership requires a balance of getting out in front of the group and staying with and within it. It's a broad, fuzzy line. If your stance is, "Well, I can't make a move until the group tells me what they want," you're on the wrong side of the line. If your stance is, "What they need??!! I'll tell these people what they need!!" you're on the other wrong side of it.
Individuals bear some responsibility as well.
It is pointless to take a stance of "I will unite behind a leader just as soon as I find one who matches what I want 100% of the time," also known as "Never."
For every leadership figure in every movement, you can find people who bitch about that leader because she is too radical, not radical enough, too cocky, too meek, or took the wrong position on the Great Waffle Debate of '07. The leader may have made a good call on 99 issues, but can't be forgiven for his position on Issue #100.
In every movement you can find people who are so twisted up about the detail work that they've lost the ability to distinguish between people who are fundamentally their allies and people who are their mortal enemies.
The answer for individuals, I think, is to stop thinking that A Leader is someone whose judgment you can always safely follow blindly. Too many people think that belonging to a movement or following a leader means that you never have to thoughtfully consider your options and your choices ever again. That's simply unwise. We are all human. I have had days of really great smartness, and profound stupid. After fifteen years of writing a local newspaper column, the best thing I still hear is, "I don't always agree with you, but..." Because if you always agree with me, God help us both.
Look, leaders are, by nature, difficult people. They have enough ego to think they can lead, and if they're at all effective, they take a stand on issues, which guarantees that somebody somewhere will think they are wrong. No infallible superhuman is coming to rescue us; we are going to have to make our peace with the pesky live humans who have showed up to work the problem.
As members, we need to ask this question: Are our leaders standing up for values and goals that we fundamentally support?
As leaders, we need to ask these questions: Are we hearing from all our members and considering how what they have to say might matter to our mission? Are we earning their loyalty, or simply demanding it? Are we engaging their best judgment, or demanding that they not use it?
I'm not much of a joiner, and I'm very leery of groupthink. Meetings where we sing songs about how great our group is or share poems about the greatness of Fearless Leader just creep me the hell out. But I value BATs and NEA and AFT and the leaders who keep those groups moving forward, and I can offer my support and backing without doing it blindly. I try to be realistic about their strengths and weaknesses without imagining that either the strengths or the weaknesses are the full picture.
There is often a fear in leadership that debate and disagreement will weaken the group. But spirited and principled debate is often the best path to strength and unity. Maintaining unity in a movement is like balancing a stack spinning plates-- it requires constant adjustment and energy. You can't just step back and let it go, it's always just this close to falling apart, and if you try to solve the problem by just cementing all the plates together, you've ruined the whole thing.
When leaders of a group start by saying, "We need to be sure we have total unity on this," the rest of the sentence is almost never "and so we are going to sit down with you and really listen to your concerns and ideas." No, generally a call for unity within a group comes with some diplomatically-worded version of "so shut up and get in line."
It's understandable. Groups, particularly groups that are focused on activism and Getting Things Done and Standing Up To The Man on Behalf of Our Members, really do accomplish more when they present a united front. The easiest way to render your opposition ineffective is to get them busy fighting with each other (like, say, getting people who might be unhappy with crooked rich people to focus their attention on teacher pension costs instead).
It's another example of the seduction of means that seem justified by the ends. "If we can get all the members lined up behind these goals," the reasoning goes, "then we will accomplish great things for them. So anything we do to get them lined up is okay." And that is how union leaders end up lying to their own members. "If we let a few outliers stir things up, it will distract from our mission," is how we get to the ironic spectacle of a group dedicated to giving teachers a voice in the ed reforms debate telling some teachers to shut up.
If you add personal ego to that, it only makes things worse. I have advised many, many student groups over the years, and every few years I hear the argument, "Look, we're getting really good things done as officers right now, so why not just extend our term and not have elections. If we elect someone else, they'll just mess things up."
I don't think lust for power ("I want to rule everything!") damages groups nearly as often as well-intentioned ego ("I'm the only one who can get us through these tough times, so I'd better hold onto the power to do that!")
Unions get crazy messed up with this stuff. NEA and all the sub-EAs stage manage meetings and votes more tightly than a college band halftime show. People can rise through the ranks-- as long as they prove that they're the Right Kind of People and pass all their litmus tests on the way up. And this year I've been reading repeatedly about some of the bizarre practices of the AFT, including loyalty oaths and groups whose rules against speaking out are far tighter than any school district's every thought of being.
I've been a union local president. I totally get the frustration that comes with That Guy (every single group has one) who wants to argue about stupid things or who demands that his quirky idea be considered or (least favorite) wants to argue about decisions made at long meetings he couldn't bother to attend. But if you're not careful, you will find that your group, formed to represent the concerns of individual members, expends enormous energy suppressing those individual voices. The BATs group is one of the most valuable new organizations to pop up in the education landscape, but it occasionally responds to dissent or disagreement with a blunt "If you don't like it, leave. We don't need you." That's embarrassing and indefensible.
Unity in a group comes from listening to the whole group. Leadership requires a balance of getting out in front of the group and staying with and within it. It's a broad, fuzzy line. If your stance is, "Well, I can't make a move until the group tells me what they want," you're on the wrong side of the line. If your stance is, "What they need??!! I'll tell these people what they need!!" you're on the other wrong side of it.
Individuals bear some responsibility as well.
It is pointless to take a stance of "I will unite behind a leader just as soon as I find one who matches what I want 100% of the time," also known as "Never."
For every leadership figure in every movement, you can find people who bitch about that leader because she is too radical, not radical enough, too cocky, too meek, or took the wrong position on the Great Waffle Debate of '07. The leader may have made a good call on 99 issues, but can't be forgiven for his position on Issue #100.
In every movement you can find people who are so twisted up about the detail work that they've lost the ability to distinguish between people who are fundamentally their allies and people who are their mortal enemies.
The answer for individuals, I think, is to stop thinking that A Leader is someone whose judgment you can always safely follow blindly. Too many people think that belonging to a movement or following a leader means that you never have to thoughtfully consider your options and your choices ever again. That's simply unwise. We are all human. I have had days of really great smartness, and profound stupid. After fifteen years of writing a local newspaper column, the best thing I still hear is, "I don't always agree with you, but..." Because if you always agree with me, God help us both.
Look, leaders are, by nature, difficult people. They have enough ego to think they can lead, and if they're at all effective, they take a stand on issues, which guarantees that somebody somewhere will think they are wrong. No infallible superhuman is coming to rescue us; we are going to have to make our peace with the pesky live humans who have showed up to work the problem.
As members, we need to ask this question: Are our leaders standing up for values and goals that we fundamentally support?
As leaders, we need to ask these questions: Are we hearing from all our members and considering how what they have to say might matter to our mission? Are we earning their loyalty, or simply demanding it? Are we engaging their best judgment, or demanding that they not use it?
I'm not much of a joiner, and I'm very leery of groupthink. Meetings where we sing songs about how great our group is or share poems about the greatness of Fearless Leader just creep me the hell out. But I value BATs and NEA and AFT and the leaders who keep those groups moving forward, and I can offer my support and backing without doing it blindly. I try to be realistic about their strengths and weaknesses without imagining that either the strengths or the weaknesses are the full picture.
There is often a fear in leadership that debate and disagreement will weaken the group. But spirited and principled debate is often the best path to strength and unity. Maintaining unity in a movement is like balancing a stack spinning plates-- it requires constant adjustment and energy. You can't just step back and let it go, it's always just this close to falling apart, and if you try to solve the problem by just cementing all the plates together, you've ruined the whole thing.
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