I cannot believe the conversation about classroom diversity is still popping up.
It's all the more puzzling because I haven't heard anybody say that teachers from a variety of racial and cultural backgrounds would be bad (and I live in an area where hearing someone say that wouldn't necessarily surprise me).
But the picture is pretty simple. Our nation's student body is now not mostly anything, but our teacher pool is overwhelming white and female. We need more teachers who are not white and/or female. Some teachers who are white and/or female seem to hear this as "You are not fit to do your job." I don't think that's the point. Diversity in the classroom matters-- and not just in the obvious areas where mostly-black student populations are taught by mostly-white faculties.
Several years ago in my district, we had an elementary school with 100% female staff. Teachers, administration, lunchroom, custodians-- every single adult in that building was a woman. That meant that students who lived with a single mom could go weeks at a time without ever seeing an adult male. That was simply a bad idea any way you cut it. Boys need to see bigger, more adult versions of themselves, and girls need to see functional adult men (the same holds true if we reverse the genders, but it's beyond-improbable that students could find themselves in a school with no adult women).
Children connect to similarities. Small children will get excited about simple shared superficialities (Look! We both have blond hair!) while older students will choose clothing and hairstyle so that they can look like other students and thereby cement a bond. When they find similarities with adults, it helps them imagine what their adult selves could be.
It seems like basic common sense to me that-- at a minimum-- students ought to be able to look around a school and see adults who look like them. It seems like good educational sense that they should also find adults in their school who build their sense of who they can be and what they can become, as well as adults who can understand the place they're coming from.
All of us stand in a classroom, equipped to make certain connections. I have been in the school (student and teacher) for forty-some years, and my own background has a lot to do with music and performance. I have no organized team sport background, which makes me a little bit of an outlier in this neck of the woods. I'm not a young guy, and I am ancestors-on-the-Mayflower white. I'm on wedding #2 after a decade-long interregnum, and I've raised two children. So, basically, I'm a fluent native speaker of some languages/codes, and not so much of others. That's fine. We don't need an entire staff of people who all come from the same place, are rooted in the same culture, or speak the same version of the language.
This just seems self-evident to me. The more different voices we have in a school, the better off the school is. First, because that improves the odds that each student will find a voice that speaks to him or her. Second, because everyone else gets to hear and experience voices different from their own.
A hard part, apparently, is keeping those voices unranked, to avoid the suggestion that some voices are somehow better, more valuable, more correct than others. But the hardest part is actually getting the varied voices in the room.
I teach in a rural/small town setting. In all the years I've taught here, I've had three African-American colleagues in the entire district (which is three more than some other local districts can claim). We have a very small percentage of students of color, and most of the people who apply to work here come from here, so there's a bit of a cycle that is hard to break. And like most schools in PA, we barely have the money to function, let alone do things like headhunt to fill positions (for which we already get a good quantity of applicants, so administrators feel little pressure to reach out). We do not have a very diverse student population or teaching staff, and that's a problem for a district that has little daily experience of the big, wide world outside our area (I have had parents who don't like to come to school events because they didn't like "city driving" in our town of 7,000 people).
Connecting to that outside world is a challenge for rural kids. When they turn television, they do not see people who live like they do, and when rural life is shown, it is either some cartoon bumpkinny Dukes of Hazzard hick version, or it's just laughably wrong (like all the television "small towns" that have a local tv station.
This has to be even worse for my rural/small town students of color, who don't see people like themselves pretty much anywhere.
We need more teachers of color, not as special "guests" (or as the building "specialist" in talking to "those students") but as full partners in the work, and we don't need them only in large, urban, mostly-black school systems. How we get there I have no idea. Black men are entering the profession at a high rate, but they are leaving it at a high rate, too. That's a problem; I don't see how anybody can assert that it isn't. It's not a problem that will be solved by TFA, who are aggressively courting black men in order to provide them with the worst possible experience of teaching. This is not a great recruitment technique.
The teaching profession, now more than ever, needs to be broad and deep, but instead is becoming narrower and shallower. If our goal is to impart the full range and richness of human understanding and experience to students from a full range of culture and background, it makes sense to enlist a full sampling of human beings to do that work. Instead, the profession is drying up and people are avoiding it in ever-increasing numbers. This is not a good thing for the country, and it is foolish to pretend otherwise.
Monday, May 18, 2015
Sunday, May 17, 2015
Two Turnaround Questions
From Pennsylvania to Arizona, reformsters are hitting the streets (well, the legislatures) to push the value of turning schools around. More specifically, they're pushing for a New Orleans style handover of schools to charter operators. The seeds of slow-motion disaster (financial starvation and bogus failure rates for bogus standardized tests) are finally yielding fruit that is ready to harvest.
Hear the touching chorus. "Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled low-scoring students yearning to hand their funding to charter operators who may let them breathe free, but that's the last free thing anybody is going to get because we have some Return On Investment numbers to make this quarter." Or something like that. One can hardly expect hedge funders to be great poets, too.
There is one strategic problem with selling the idea of turning failing schools around-- pretty much nobody has ever actually done it. Charteristas have had a decade or so to show off how they can transform failing schools into gardens of glorious success, and so far the best they can come up with is a two-step process:
1) Make sure you get all the loser students out of your building.
2) Write really well-spun press releases and get news outlets to run the uncritically.
Mostly, turnaround specialists end up looking like Karen Lott in this great piece of reportage from Wendy Lecker in Connecticut. Lott went before Connecticut's General Assembly Education Committee to tell her own story as a turnaround principal. As Lecker reports, Lott had several key items that she felt were necessary to pursue the turnaround success that she hasn't actually achieved yet-- more veteran teachers, less staff turnover, use of the state curriculum, support programs to address impact of poverty, more time, more resources, and more autonomy. That thunderclap you just heard is the sound of all the public school teachers in the country slapping their foreheads and saying, "Wow! More resources and freedom! Poverty matters! I had no idea!"
In short, Lott doesn't know a single thing that the public system doesn't already know. This is par for the course. I have a standing offer for anyone who can tell me about a single technique, program or approach developed in charter schools that has gone on to be widely successful in public schools. The "successful" charter model is generally the same-- do pretty much what the public schools do, but do it with a different (better) group of students.
So when a turnaround expert turns up in your neighborhood and starts asking for control of public schools, here are the two questions to ask:
1) What specific successful techniques and programs do you propose to use in turning around the school?
2) Is there any reason those techniques could not be used in the current public school?
Without clear, compelling, and evidence-supported answers to those questions, there is simply no reason to close a public school just to open a money-making (and that includes money-making "non-profits") charter operation.
It is the great charter secret-- charter operators don't know a damn thing that public schools don't know. They have had years to try every trick that they thought would transform schools into factories of excellence; of all these tricks, only careful management of which students are in the building has been consistently successful. I believe there are some charter successes out there, and I believe there could be more-- but not on a large scale. The most successful charter ideas would be location specific, and not scaleable. But that's not what charteristas are selling. What they are selling is snake oil and smoke, and they need to be called on it repeatedly.
Hear the touching chorus. "Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled low-scoring students yearning to hand their funding to charter operators who may let them breathe free, but that's the last free thing anybody is going to get because we have some Return On Investment numbers to make this quarter." Or something like that. One can hardly expect hedge funders to be great poets, too.
There is one strategic problem with selling the idea of turning failing schools around-- pretty much nobody has ever actually done it. Charteristas have had a decade or so to show off how they can transform failing schools into gardens of glorious success, and so far the best they can come up with is a two-step process:
1) Make sure you get all the loser students out of your building.
2) Write really well-spun press releases and get news outlets to run the uncritically.
Mostly, turnaround specialists end up looking like Karen Lott in this great piece of reportage from Wendy Lecker in Connecticut. Lott went before Connecticut's General Assembly Education Committee to tell her own story as a turnaround principal. As Lecker reports, Lott had several key items that she felt were necessary to pursue the turnaround success that she hasn't actually achieved yet-- more veteran teachers, less staff turnover, use of the state curriculum, support programs to address impact of poverty, more time, more resources, and more autonomy. That thunderclap you just heard is the sound of all the public school teachers in the country slapping their foreheads and saying, "Wow! More resources and freedom! Poverty matters! I had no idea!"
In short, Lott doesn't know a single thing that the public system doesn't already know. This is par for the course. I have a standing offer for anyone who can tell me about a single technique, program or approach developed in charter schools that has gone on to be widely successful in public schools. The "successful" charter model is generally the same-- do pretty much what the public schools do, but do it with a different (better) group of students.
So when a turnaround expert turns up in your neighborhood and starts asking for control of public schools, here are the two questions to ask:
1) What specific successful techniques and programs do you propose to use in turning around the school?
2) Is there any reason those techniques could not be used in the current public school?
Without clear, compelling, and evidence-supported answers to those questions, there is simply no reason to close a public school just to open a money-making (and that includes money-making "non-profits") charter operation.
It is the great charter secret-- charter operators don't know a damn thing that public schools don't know. They have had years to try every trick that they thought would transform schools into factories of excellence; of all these tricks, only careful management of which students are in the building has been consistently successful. I believe there are some charter successes out there, and I believe there could be more-- but not on a large scale. The most successful charter ideas would be location specific, and not scaleable. But that's not what charteristas are selling. What they are selling is snake oil and smoke, and they need to be called on it repeatedly.
Who's Listening In Newark?
The mayor of a state's largest city joins protestors in blocking the main street during rush hour. Just imagine how that would play out anywhere else. Bill DeBlasio joins high school students to stage a protest shutting down Times Square. Rahm Emanuel joins members of the Chicago school community to bring traffic through downtown Chicago to a grinding halt (okay, that last one might not actually be noticeable).
But when Mayor Ras Baraka joined a student protest on Newark's main drag last Wednesday, it was if New Jersey media had collectively decided they were going to silence the dissenting voices of Newark. Go ahead and search for news about the protest on google-- you'll find nothing. You can find an account from independent journalist Bob Braun and not much else.
The protest was just one more in a long series of protests featuring the Newark Students Union and students from East Side High, groups that have consistently called attention to the embarrassing educational train wreck that is Newark.
Here's how reformsters keep telling us this is supposed to work: After collecting data that shows Certain Schools are failing, the Powers That Be will rush to make sure those schools get the assistance and support they need. That data will make sure those students (who often turn out to be not white and not wealthy) are not invisible. It's the civil rights issue of our era!
Here's how it actually has worked in Newark: After collecting "evidence" that the schools of Newark were in "crisis," the state took the district over, pushing out the superintendent and the elected school board. Today, Newark Schools are run by an outsider who won't meet, speak to, or respond to the students, parents and citizens of Newark, saddling them with a school system that is a bedraggled mess. They have elected a mayor to speak for them on this issue, and he, too, has been ignored. It has taken a series of demonstrations and protests to get the students and citizens of Newark any kind of attention at all. It's almost as if they're invisible.
Newark is what the solution to the "civil rights issue" of our time looks like. An entire community silenced, cut off from access to any power over their own schools, forced to create a larger and larger fuss just to get people to notice and acknowledge that Things Are Not Okay.
People want to be heard. When they are ignored, they just raise their voices, and keep raising them. The strategy of the PTB in New Jersey (which includes the news media) has been to ignore those voices, and to keep promoting a charterized system as a great way to meet the needs of the people, even as the people are out in the street blocking traffic and explaining just how un-met their needs are.
As quoted by Braun, here's what Ras Baraka had to say last Wednesday:
“This struggle is not emotional. It’s not about us being angry at Cami Anderson. I don’t want to make it about her and me or make it about her personality. We’re opposed to what’s going on and, who’s ever down there doing it, is wrong. No matter who they are or where they come from, it’s wrong.
“We’re not against it because she’s from New York, but because she’s wrong. We’re not mad about her personality. We’re mad because she’s wrong. We’re not upset about anything else except for the fact that she wrong.
“She was supposed to be here helping public schools grow, not closing them down. That’s what we’re upset about.
“Why am I upset? Because we have a 70 million budget deficit for the Newark schools that keeps growing because she keeps putting teachers on the EWP list, putting them in rubber rooms, putting administrators on the list, too, and making the city pay for it. The taxpayers are paying for it—not just the state taxpayers but Newark taxpayers—are paying for that, too. That’s why we’re upset.
“We’re upset because she keeps ‘renewing’ schools and it’s not working, the renew school thing is not working, but she keeps doing it and it’s not working.
“We’re upset because she says she’s going to turnaround schools but that’s a code name for closing them down. She’s getting money from the state for the turnaround and we don’t see any of that money. The state is supposed to be working with the schools for the turnarounds but that’s not happening either.
“We’re upset because she is splitting people’s families up. Because she’s sending kids with special needs to schools and the schools don’t offer special needs programs. We’re upset because she’s sending English language learners to schools without English language learner programs.
“That’s why we’re upset.”
Cami Anderson must go, he concluded. “Not tomorrow. Today.”
The mayor of New Jersey's largest city stood in the street, blocking rush hour traffic with students and community members, and the press chose to ignore it.
I do not know how folks like Cami Anderson and Chris Christie imagine this is going to end. Do they really think that at some point, the citizens and students and parents and community leaders of Newark will shrug and say, "Well, we tried, but I guess they're going to ignore us, so let's go home and just quietly enjoy being disenfranchised, ignored, and silenced. It probably won't be so bad." Is that what New Jersey's bosses think is going to happen.
The whole business reminds me of Patrick Henry's Speech in the Virginia Convention and his response to those who insist that more "proper" and "quiet" means of trying to resolve differences must be tried.
Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne! In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free-- if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending--if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained--we must fight!
I don't know how things are going to end in Newark. The activists of Newark are thoughtful and committed. I admire how they have been able to respond to the situation with strong concerted action, but without lashing out in anger. As they raise their voices louder and louder, nobody will be able to ask why they didn't try more reasonable or appropriate ways to be heard. What people should ask is why in all that time, nobody in the halls of power bothered to listen.
But when Mayor Ras Baraka joined a student protest on Newark's main drag last Wednesday, it was if New Jersey media had collectively decided they were going to silence the dissenting voices of Newark. Go ahead and search for news about the protest on google-- you'll find nothing. You can find an account from independent journalist Bob Braun and not much else.
The protest was just one more in a long series of protests featuring the Newark Students Union and students from East Side High, groups that have consistently called attention to the embarrassing educational train wreck that is Newark.
Here's how reformsters keep telling us this is supposed to work: After collecting data that shows Certain Schools are failing, the Powers That Be will rush to make sure those schools get the assistance and support they need. That data will make sure those students (who often turn out to be not white and not wealthy) are not invisible. It's the civil rights issue of our era!
Here's how it actually has worked in Newark: After collecting "evidence" that the schools of Newark were in "crisis," the state took the district over, pushing out the superintendent and the elected school board. Today, Newark Schools are run by an outsider who won't meet, speak to, or respond to the students, parents and citizens of Newark, saddling them with a school system that is a bedraggled mess. They have elected a mayor to speak for them on this issue, and he, too, has been ignored. It has taken a series of demonstrations and protests to get the students and citizens of Newark any kind of attention at all. It's almost as if they're invisible.
Newark is what the solution to the "civil rights issue" of our time looks like. An entire community silenced, cut off from access to any power over their own schools, forced to create a larger and larger fuss just to get people to notice and acknowledge that Things Are Not Okay.
People want to be heard. When they are ignored, they just raise their voices, and keep raising them. The strategy of the PTB in New Jersey (which includes the news media) has been to ignore those voices, and to keep promoting a charterized system as a great way to meet the needs of the people, even as the people are out in the street blocking traffic and explaining just how un-met their needs are.
As quoted by Braun, here's what Ras Baraka had to say last Wednesday:
“This struggle is not emotional. It’s not about us being angry at Cami Anderson. I don’t want to make it about her and me or make it about her personality. We’re opposed to what’s going on and, who’s ever down there doing it, is wrong. No matter who they are or where they come from, it’s wrong.
“We’re not against it because she’s from New York, but because she’s wrong. We’re not mad about her personality. We’re mad because she’s wrong. We’re not upset about anything else except for the fact that she wrong.
“She was supposed to be here helping public schools grow, not closing them down. That’s what we’re upset about.
“Why am I upset? Because we have a 70 million budget deficit for the Newark schools that keeps growing because she keeps putting teachers on the EWP list, putting them in rubber rooms, putting administrators on the list, too, and making the city pay for it. The taxpayers are paying for it—not just the state taxpayers but Newark taxpayers—are paying for that, too. That’s why we’re upset.
“We’re upset because she keeps ‘renewing’ schools and it’s not working, the renew school thing is not working, but she keeps doing it and it’s not working.
“We’re upset because she says she’s going to turnaround schools but that’s a code name for closing them down. She’s getting money from the state for the turnaround and we don’t see any of that money. The state is supposed to be working with the schools for the turnarounds but that’s not happening either.
“We’re upset because she is splitting people’s families up. Because she’s sending kids with special needs to schools and the schools don’t offer special needs programs. We’re upset because she’s sending English language learners to schools without English language learner programs.
“That’s why we’re upset.”
Cami Anderson must go, he concluded. “Not tomorrow. Today.”
The mayor of New Jersey's largest city stood in the street, blocking rush hour traffic with students and community members, and the press chose to ignore it.
I do not know how folks like Cami Anderson and Chris Christie imagine this is going to end. Do they really think that at some point, the citizens and students and parents and community leaders of Newark will shrug and say, "Well, we tried, but I guess they're going to ignore us, so let's go home and just quietly enjoy being disenfranchised, ignored, and silenced. It probably won't be so bad." Is that what New Jersey's bosses think is going to happen.
The whole business reminds me of Patrick Henry's Speech in the Virginia Convention and his response to those who insist that more "proper" and "quiet" means of trying to resolve differences must be tried.
Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne! In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free-- if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending--if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained--we must fight!
I don't know how things are going to end in Newark. The activists of Newark are thoughtful and committed. I admire how they have been able to respond to the situation with strong concerted action, but without lashing out in anger. As they raise their voices louder and louder, nobody will be able to ask why they didn't try more reasonable or appropriate ways to be heard. What people should ask is why in all that time, nobody in the halls of power bothered to listen.
Saturday, May 16, 2015
Get the New Orleans Story Out
I have even more interest in the New Orleans Recovery School District than ever, because while nobody was looking, the idea of such a school district seems to have skulked its way into Pennsylvania.
New Orleans is a reformster's dream, a school district where all of that messy democratically-controlled local public school system could be swept away, clearing the ground for edupreneurs to start sweeping up some of that sweet, sweet money.
The idea has spread. I've probably spent the most space here on Tennessee's Achievement School District. The idea of these districts is to set up a system in which local control and democratically-elected boards can be completely circumvented and some bureaucratic-corporate entity gets to decide which eduprofiteer gets to cash in. These kind of districts are truly the privatizers' dream, a happy land where students and families are simply conduits for generating tax-based revenue without regard for community, democracy, educational quality-- well, anything at all except those sweet, sweet piles of cash.
Not every location has been so fortunate as to be hit by a deadly and destructive hurricane, so in every place that's not New Orleans, crafting a narrative of public school disaster has taken a little longer. It takes a while to slowly starve a school district into submission or to generate the kind of BS Test scores that allow little boys to cry out about public school wolves. But reformster efforts to create disaster have begun to pay off.
In the meantime, reformsters have also done their best to sell a narrative of NOLA success. The RSD is awesome! Everyone is happy! Student scores are way up! It has been both horrifying and depressing to see how thoroughly this narrative has been adopted, leaving people like Mercedes Schneider and Crazy Crawfish to get out the story of what is really happening down there. This is a critical talking point-- New Orleans is the test of every reformster idea and they must sell it as a crown jewel in order to keep moving their programs forward. What Americans come to believe about the New Orleans Recovery School District is going to shape what comes next in the struggle for public education in this country.
That's why I'm asking for help for a friend. Reformsters are spending millions upon millions of dollars promoting and pushing the narrative of the Miracle Revival of New Orleans Schools, while the truth has to depend on people working for $0.00 in their free time to get the word out.
Jennifer Berkshire (Edushyster) proposes to travel to New Orleans and get the stories that aren't being told by speaking to the actual live human citizens who are living through this privatized democracy-free school system. Unlike the reformster crowd, Berkshire does not have zillionaire backers, or even pedestrian millionaire backers. If you care about this stuff, if you think that voices speaking up for democracy and public education and quality education and students above profits-- if you believe all that stuff matters, this is a critical point at which you can chip in.
The Beacon is a site for crowdsourcing journalism projects. It gives anyone with worthy work to do a way to meet the expenses of doing that work without having to make a deal with the corporate devil to do it.
We are spread out and with limited resources. But if, for instance, each of the people who follows this blog on Facebook kicked in ten bucks, Berkshire would more than meet her target. I've pledged. Heck, my mom has pledged. You should do the same. Wherever you are, whatever your situation, this is a concrete way to help the cause of public education in this country at the critical juncture of a very important story-- a story that is unlikely to be covered well by much of the regular media.
This is your chance to help. Follow the link, make a pledge, help the real story of New Orleans get out. This matters.
New Orleans is a reformster's dream, a school district where all of that messy democratically-controlled local public school system could be swept away, clearing the ground for edupreneurs to start sweeping up some of that sweet, sweet money.
The idea has spread. I've probably spent the most space here on Tennessee's Achievement School District. The idea of these districts is to set up a system in which local control and democratically-elected boards can be completely circumvented and some bureaucratic-corporate entity gets to decide which eduprofiteer gets to cash in. These kind of districts are truly the privatizers' dream, a happy land where students and families are simply conduits for generating tax-based revenue without regard for community, democracy, educational quality-- well, anything at all except those sweet, sweet piles of cash.
Not every location has been so fortunate as to be hit by a deadly and destructive hurricane, so in every place that's not New Orleans, crafting a narrative of public school disaster has taken a little longer. It takes a while to slowly starve a school district into submission or to generate the kind of BS Test scores that allow little boys to cry out about public school wolves. But reformster efforts to create disaster have begun to pay off.
In the meantime, reformsters have also done their best to sell a narrative of NOLA success. The RSD is awesome! Everyone is happy! Student scores are way up! It has been both horrifying and depressing to see how thoroughly this narrative has been adopted, leaving people like Mercedes Schneider and Crazy Crawfish to get out the story of what is really happening down there. This is a critical talking point-- New Orleans is the test of every reformster idea and they must sell it as a crown jewel in order to keep moving their programs forward. What Americans come to believe about the New Orleans Recovery School District is going to shape what comes next in the struggle for public education in this country.
That's why I'm asking for help for a friend. Reformsters are spending millions upon millions of dollars promoting and pushing the narrative of the Miracle Revival of New Orleans Schools, while the truth has to depend on people working for $0.00 in their free time to get the word out.
Jennifer Berkshire (Edushyster) proposes to travel to New Orleans and get the stories that aren't being told by speaking to the actual live human citizens who are living through this privatized democracy-free school system. Unlike the reformster crowd, Berkshire does not have zillionaire backers, or even pedestrian millionaire backers. If you care about this stuff, if you think that voices speaking up for democracy and public education and quality education and students above profits-- if you believe all that stuff matters, this is a critical point at which you can chip in.
The Beacon is a site for crowdsourcing journalism projects. It gives anyone with worthy work to do a way to meet the expenses of doing that work without having to make a deal with the corporate devil to do it.
We are spread out and with limited resources. But if, for instance, each of the people who follows this blog on Facebook kicked in ten bucks, Berkshire would more than meet her target. I've pledged. Heck, my mom has pledged. You should do the same. Wherever you are, whatever your situation, this is a concrete way to help the cause of public education in this country at the critical juncture of a very important story-- a story that is unlikely to be covered well by much of the regular media.
This is your chance to help. Follow the link, make a pledge, help the real story of New Orleans get out. This matters.
Dan Masi: PARCC PR Explained
Well, this is pretty awesome. PARCC has a video explainer (which I guess is more high tech than a mansplainer) intended to help us all understand how the PARCC is super-awesome. It's only a few minutes long and will make what else I have to show you funnier.
Ordinarily I would watch this and deconstruct it for you shot by shot, pointing out the various moments of transparent stupid. But Dan Masi is already on it. He has fixed the audio quality so that we can hear the real message (note-- the scrolling website recommendations at the end are his, not PARCC's). As I type this, Masi's work has only been viewed six times, which is just a waste. Watch and enjoy:
Ordinarily I would watch this and deconstruct it for you shot by shot, pointing out the various moments of transparent stupid. But Dan Masi is already on it. He has fixed the audio quality so that we can hear the real message (note-- the scrolling website recommendations at the end are his, not PARCC's). As I type this, Masi's work has only been viewed six times, which is just a waste. Watch and enjoy:
How Big Is The Honesty Gap
Sooo many folks are Deeply Concerned about the Honesty Gap. Just check out twitter
Oops! That last tweet was apparently about some other Honesty Gap.
The Gappers are repeatedly expressing concern that parents need to know the truth about how their children are doing, specifically whether or not students are ready for college. Apparently everyone in the world is lying to them. Schools and teachers are lying when they assign grades. Even college letters of acceptance are Big Fat Lies. Everyone is lying-- the only possible way to know how your child is doing is to have that child take a Big Standardized Test, and not just any BS Test, but one from our friends at PARCC or SBA. Only those profoundly honest tests will do.
I got into a twitter discussion about this because I asked why, if NAEP is the gold standard by which state tests can be measured, why do we need the state test? Because the NAEP only samples, and we need to test every single child so that parents can get feedback. Okay, I asked-- doesn't that mean that the tests are for two different purposes and therefor can't really be compared? No, they can be compared if NAEP disaggregates well. So then why can't we-- well, I don't blame the person on the other end. Trying to have a serious conversation via twitter is like having sex by semaphore.
I gather that proof of state honesty would be more students failing, because once again we have an argument that starts with, "We know states suck at education and that students are doing terribly, so we just need to design an instrument that will catch them sucking." It's so much easier to design the right scientific measure if you already know what the answer is supposed to be.
So where is the actual honesty gap?
Is it where Common Core promoters claim that the standards are internationally benchmarked? Is it when CCSS fans suggest that having educational standards lead to national success? Is it when they decry low US test scores without noting that the US has been at the bottom of international test results as long as such things have existed?
Is the honesty gap in view when these folks say that parents need transparent and clear assessments of their children's standing, but what they mean is the kind of vague, opaque reports proposed? You know-- the report that basically gives the child a grade of A, B, C or D on a test whose questions nobody is allowed to see or discuss? Is the honesty gap cracking open even wider every time somebody suggests that a single math-and-reading test can tell us everything we need to know about a child's readiness for college and career?
Are we looking into the abyss of the gap when advocacy groups fail to mention that they are paid to support testing and the Core, or that they stand to make a ton of money from both? Does the honesty gap yawn widely when these folks fail to state plainly, "We think the world would be a better place if we just did away with public education, and we work hard to help make that happen." Is Arne Duncan's voice echoing hollowly from the depths of Honesty Gap Gulch when he suggests that telling an eight-year-old that she's on the college track either can or should be a thing?
It is ballsy as hell for the reformsters, who have been telling lie after lie to sell the CCSS-testing combo for years (oh, remember those golden days of "teachers totally wrote the Common Core"?), to bring up concerns about honesty. I admire their guts; just not their honesty.
They have a hashtag (because, you know, that's how all the kids get their marketing done these days) and I encourage to use it to add your own observations about where the #HonestyGap actually lies.
Parents and educators deserve accurate data about how their students are performing in the classroom: http://t.co/FeIjLPlwZ4 #HonestyGap
— StudentsFirst (@StudentsFirst) May 14, 2015
.@EvanE4E: Gap between state expectations & NAEP confirms need for rigorous, consistent, clear standards http://t.co/P3WiuEt9a6 #HonestyGap
— Educators4Excellence (@Ed4Excellence) May 14, 2015
States are saying students are “proficient” when they're not actually well prepared. We need to fix the #HonestyGap: http://t.co/JbinzeO3aF
— CAP Education (@EdProgress) May 14, 2015
Awesome Products + Dubious Rewards = Bad Experience http://t.co/MdnibIcIZ7 #SurveySweepstakes #HonestyGap
— Customerville (@customerville) June 12, 2014
Oops! That last tweet was apparently about some other Honesty Gap.
The Gappers are repeatedly expressing concern that parents need to know the truth about how their children are doing, specifically whether or not students are ready for college. Apparently everyone in the world is lying to them. Schools and teachers are lying when they assign grades. Even college letters of acceptance are Big Fat Lies. Everyone is lying-- the only possible way to know how your child is doing is to have that child take a Big Standardized Test, and not just any BS Test, but one from our friends at PARCC or SBA. Only those profoundly honest tests will do.
I got into a twitter discussion about this because I asked why, if NAEP is the gold standard by which state tests can be measured, why do we need the state test? Because the NAEP only samples, and we need to test every single child so that parents can get feedback. Okay, I asked-- doesn't that mean that the tests are for two different purposes and therefor can't really be compared? No, they can be compared if NAEP disaggregates well. So then why can't we-- well, I don't blame the person on the other end. Trying to have a serious conversation via twitter is like having sex by semaphore.
I gather that proof of state honesty would be more students failing, because once again we have an argument that starts with, "We know states suck at education and that students are doing terribly, so we just need to design an instrument that will catch them sucking." It's so much easier to design the right scientific measure if you already know what the answer is supposed to be.
So where is the actual honesty gap?
Is it where Common Core promoters claim that the standards are internationally benchmarked? Is it when CCSS fans suggest that having educational standards lead to national success? Is it when they decry low US test scores without noting that the US has been at the bottom of international test results as long as such things have existed?
Is the honesty gap in view when these folks say that parents need transparent and clear assessments of their children's standing, but what they mean is the kind of vague, opaque reports proposed? You know-- the report that basically gives the child a grade of A, B, C or D on a test whose questions nobody is allowed to see or discuss? Is the honesty gap cracking open even wider every time somebody suggests that a single math-and-reading test can tell us everything we need to know about a child's readiness for college and career?
Are we looking into the abyss of the gap when advocacy groups fail to mention that they are paid to support testing and the Core, or that they stand to make a ton of money from both? Does the honesty gap yawn widely when these folks fail to state plainly, "We think the world would be a better place if we just did away with public education, and we work hard to help make that happen." Is Arne Duncan's voice echoing hollowly from the depths of Honesty Gap Gulch when he suggests that telling an eight-year-old that she's on the college track either can or should be a thing?
It is ballsy as hell for the reformsters, who have been telling lie after lie to sell the CCSS-testing combo for years (oh, remember those golden days of "teachers totally wrote the Common Core"?), to bring up concerns about honesty. I admire their guts; just not their honesty.
They have a hashtag (because, you know, that's how all the kids get their marketing done these days) and I encourage to use it to add your own observations about where the #HonestyGap actually lies.
Friday, May 15, 2015
Is That It
This has been a week.
These are all things that have happened this week.
Monday night was the end-of-the-year choir concert. The director recognized several students who had choreographed some numbers, including one who had choreographed and taught the dances to middle school students. Each senior had a solo part somewhere in the program (even those who didn't particularly want one.)
Early in the week, one of our students was pulled out of school by her father. He had to come get her to tell her at her mother had died in a car accident. Her mother was a graduate of this high school. She was thirty-three. Within the same twenty-four hours, the twenty-nine year old father of students in my wife's classroom was also killed.
This was a big week for my yearbook staff. Wednesday was our annual end-of-year picnic. At that picnic I recognize seniors, one at a time, give them a keepsake to commemorate their years on staff, and explain why that keepsake especially fits them. It's emotional for me; they come to me as raw, graceless sophomores and I get to watch them grow into responsible, reliable leaders who can spot a problem and deal with it as part of a larger team. Then the seniors announce their successors in leadership roles and pass on some token of office (some of these have been passed along for years). Then today we passed out the new books to the student body, and a year's worth of photography, layout, design, a thousand thousand careful decisions finally unveiled to their audience, to sit on shelves and eventually be read and pored over by people who aren't even born yet.
The yearbook distribution was at a school event (Homecoming-- a reverse Homecoming) at which each class fields a team for intra-class competition. Throughout the week we have voted on a Homecoming King, selected by money placed in jars, that money going (by student council's choice) to benefit a student here who is about to start treatment for his third battle with cancer.
Every night this week I've been at school for rehearsals and performances of a local dance studio (I'm the Stage Crew Guy at my school). The dance studio owner is also a former student and now long-time friend who plays piano for theater productions and the traditional jazz band I play in. This is a small town. Again, I find myself watching students act as accomplished performers, dancers and choreographers who know how to command a stage. In the meantime, my stage crew guys (freshmen and eighth graders) are mastering choosing lighting that complements the dance while matching it to music and mood, fitting color and timing to the performance on stage. I'm proud of everybody here.
If you do the dance circuit, you know the drill. Little cute girls. Older accomplished girls. Girls in the too-big-to-be-cute, too-young-to-be-very-graceful stage. All wrapped together in a show that lasts for hours.
But there is one number. A girl is discovered open stage, alone. Others run by, some together, some in groups, then suddenly all stop together, sink as of pushed down by the some crushing force, spring up, and dance together. In one moment they are united in movement, the next they fly apart. They spring up, they run, they run hard. And then a long line, turning into crack the whip-- a dancer flips off the line by herself and sinks back to the floor.
Maybe I'm a little raw this week, but it has gotten me every night.
All of this, these many moments and others like them, have contrasted with two full days of Big Standardized Testing, one covering confusing math and another featuring 54 bad reading questions and as I sit and waste my day reading bad instructions and watching students bubble away, I keep thinking-- is that it?
Is that it?
Test manufacturers want to sell these things as a measure of what our students can handle, what they're ready for, what they're capable and prepared for, who they are and what they are made of, and I look at these dry, dusty, lifeless paper stacks of bad cracked questions and-- really? Is that it?
Life is just too short for this. I mean, life is really, too often, too short for this time-wasting baloney, this clattering, clanking collection of caliginous heartless junk. Life is rich and deep and constantly unfolding in vast and varied patterns filled with crackling chaos and anchoring order.
The test manufacturers and the data-loving disciples who unendingly tout their soul-sucking standardization are people who have decided they can understand the ocean by capturing a few spoonfulls of saltwater in a paper cup. Worse, instead of recognizing that the paper cup is too small and inadequate for the job, they insist on declaring every drop of ocean that falls outside the cup is some roguish, illegitimate mistake, something to be ignored and eliminated because it is too hard for them to measure with their little cup. They would like to measure out all lives with coffee spoons, and they will not rest until every life is small enough to fit (well, all lives except those of their own loved ones).
Well, that's not it. That is just not it. It is unfortunate if life is too big and messy for them to grasp and measure, but folks-- that is a feature not a bug, to embraced and not ignored. Your tests are stupid. They do not help, and they do not add a whit (or a wit) to my students' lives.
That is not it. That is not it at all.
Oh yeah. And BB King died this week. I wonder how he would have done on his BS Test.
These are all things that have happened this week.
Monday night was the end-of-the-year choir concert. The director recognized several students who had choreographed some numbers, including one who had choreographed and taught the dances to middle school students. Each senior had a solo part somewhere in the program (even those who didn't particularly want one.)
Early in the week, one of our students was pulled out of school by her father. He had to come get her to tell her at her mother had died in a car accident. Her mother was a graduate of this high school. She was thirty-three. Within the same twenty-four hours, the twenty-nine year old father of students in my wife's classroom was also killed.
This was a big week for my yearbook staff. Wednesday was our annual end-of-year picnic. At that picnic I recognize seniors, one at a time, give them a keepsake to commemorate their years on staff, and explain why that keepsake especially fits them. It's emotional for me; they come to me as raw, graceless sophomores and I get to watch them grow into responsible, reliable leaders who can spot a problem and deal with it as part of a larger team. Then the seniors announce their successors in leadership roles and pass on some token of office (some of these have been passed along for years). Then today we passed out the new books to the student body, and a year's worth of photography, layout, design, a thousand thousand careful decisions finally unveiled to their audience, to sit on shelves and eventually be read and pored over by people who aren't even born yet.
The yearbook distribution was at a school event (Homecoming-- a reverse Homecoming) at which each class fields a team for intra-class competition. Throughout the week we have voted on a Homecoming King, selected by money placed in jars, that money going (by student council's choice) to benefit a student here who is about to start treatment for his third battle with cancer.
Every night this week I've been at school for rehearsals and performances of a local dance studio (I'm the Stage Crew Guy at my school). The dance studio owner is also a former student and now long-time friend who plays piano for theater productions and the traditional jazz band I play in. This is a small town. Again, I find myself watching students act as accomplished performers, dancers and choreographers who know how to command a stage. In the meantime, my stage crew guys (freshmen and eighth graders) are mastering choosing lighting that complements the dance while matching it to music and mood, fitting color and timing to the performance on stage. I'm proud of everybody here.
If you do the dance circuit, you know the drill. Little cute girls. Older accomplished girls. Girls in the too-big-to-be-cute, too-young-to-be-very-graceful stage. All wrapped together in a show that lasts for hours.
But there is one number. A girl is discovered open stage, alone. Others run by, some together, some in groups, then suddenly all stop together, sink as of pushed down by the some crushing force, spring up, and dance together. In one moment they are united in movement, the next they fly apart. They spring up, they run, they run hard. And then a long line, turning into crack the whip-- a dancer flips off the line by herself and sinks back to the floor.
Maybe I'm a little raw this week, but it has gotten me every night.
All of this, these many moments and others like them, have contrasted with two full days of Big Standardized Testing, one covering confusing math and another featuring 54 bad reading questions and as I sit and waste my day reading bad instructions and watching students bubble away, I keep thinking-- is that it?
Is that it?
Test manufacturers want to sell these things as a measure of what our students can handle, what they're ready for, what they're capable and prepared for, who they are and what they are made of, and I look at these dry, dusty, lifeless paper stacks of bad cracked questions and-- really? Is that it?
Life is just too short for this. I mean, life is really, too often, too short for this time-wasting baloney, this clattering, clanking collection of caliginous heartless junk. Life is rich and deep and constantly unfolding in vast and varied patterns filled with crackling chaos and anchoring order.
The test manufacturers and the data-loving disciples who unendingly tout their soul-sucking standardization are people who have decided they can understand the ocean by capturing a few spoonfulls of saltwater in a paper cup. Worse, instead of recognizing that the paper cup is too small and inadequate for the job, they insist on declaring every drop of ocean that falls outside the cup is some roguish, illegitimate mistake, something to be ignored and eliminated because it is too hard for them to measure with their little cup. They would like to measure out all lives with coffee spoons, and they will not rest until every life is small enough to fit (well, all lives except those of their own loved ones).
Well, that's not it. That is just not it. It is unfortunate if life is too big and messy for them to grasp and measure, but folks-- that is a feature not a bug, to embraced and not ignored. Your tests are stupid. They do not help, and they do not add a whit (or a wit) to my students' lives.
That is not it. That is not it at all.
Oh yeah. And BB King died this week. I wonder how he would have done on his BS Test.
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