If every time your car gets too full of fast food wrappers and empty drink cans, you go buy a new car (and kept the old one so you can make payments on both), you might be a charter school fan.
If ice cream cones cost a dollar and you only have 75 cents, so you decide the solution is to buy three, you might be a charter school fan.
If you think it's a shame that some schools have gotten worse since they let Those People in, you might be a charter school fan.
If you think a great way to build grit in children is to entrust their care to an institution that might close at any time with no warning, you might b a charter school fan.
If you think anybody can be a great teacher as long as they teach out of the right book, you might be a charter school fan.
If you think there trouble with democracy is that it allows too many of the wrong people to vote, you might be a charter school fan.
If you think the best way to fix a crumbling bridge is to let private companies all build bridges up and down the river, you might be a charter school fan. If you think they should all do it with the same total money budgeted for the original bridge, you definitely might be a charter school fan.
If you think taxpayers should not get to elect the people who decide what to do with taxpayer dollars, you might be a charter school fan.
If you think lifeboats and fire fighters should only rescue the worthy from peril, you might be a charter school fan.
If you think the operation of education is best left to hedge fund managers, you might be a charter school fan.
If you think competition has made McDonald's, Microsoft, Netscape, America On Line, and Myspace great, you might be a charter school fan.
If you think rules are for suckers and little people, you might be a charter school fan.
Of course, if you've thought for years that fully funded charters could be a way to foster rich variety and creativity while working as partners with public schools, you might also be a charter school fan. Just a very lonely one at the moment.
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
Reformster Poker Benefit
So, got a quarter million dollars burning a hole in your pocket and looking for a way to support the school privatization movement? Then I have the event for you!
It's the Sixth Annual Take 'Em To School Poker Tournament to benefit the fine folks at Education Reform Now. The evening of conspicuous consumption will be on Wednesday, July 22 at Gotham Hall in NYC, and it will be somewhat astonishing. The event will be hosted by Phil Hellmuth and include poker pros Phil Ivey, Erik Seidel, Andy Frankenberger, and Layne Flack.
On top of that, special guest players will include Hank Azaria, James Blake, Billy Crudup, David Einhorn, Seth Gilliam, Allan Houston, Brian Koppelman, Alex Kovalev, Marc Lasry, John Starks, and Vince Van Patten. So whether you like sporty folks or voice actors from the Simpsons, you've got a chance to rub special elbows.
You can have a table with two of those special guests for the low, low registration fee of $250,000 (the Royal Flush Table). No, I did not stutter or mistype. If five years' worth of teacher salary is too steep, settle for the Straight Flush Table for only $100,000. Only one special guest for you, but hey, if you wanted two guests, you should have been more rich. You can get a table of ten with amenities for $50K or just a plain boring table for $20K. If you don't have friends, you can get a single seat for $2,000, and if you're just there to gawk, eat, drink, and play casino games, $250 is now looking like a highly reasonable cost.
It sure beats a bake sale. Who throws a party like this? Well, co-chair of the event is our old friend Whitney Tilson, which makes sense, since Education Reform Now is just another variation on DFER-- neo-lib high-rolling hedge funding education privatizers who do fun things like try to defeat local anti-reform candidates and have silly philosopher retreats to think deep thoughts about reform.
Frankly, I like the idea of the Network for Public Education or BATs buying a table or two, then sitting there making rude comments about charter schools, common core, and testing all night. But I'm afraid that my exclusive tailor, Jean-Claude Pennee, could not whip up something appropriate in time. And I'm sure it takes a certain level of wealth to set up and participate in an event like this without feeling a twinge of shame or irony. On the website for the event we can find information like this:
Mississippi’s average per pupil expenditure is $7,890 per year while New Jersey’s is $17,620, a disparity reflected across the nation. There is a ceiling, however, on what can be achieved through traditional approaches to resource re-allocation.
These are exactly the same people who declare that we have to get teacher pay under control and that you cannot improve public education by throwing money at it. Yes, throwing money at the education of children across America is a waste of money, money that could be spent on much more valuable and important things. But when the rich want to spend an evening throwing money at each other-- well, that's just good sense and great fun.
It's the Sixth Annual Take 'Em To School Poker Tournament to benefit the fine folks at Education Reform Now. The evening of conspicuous consumption will be on Wednesday, July 22 at Gotham Hall in NYC, and it will be somewhat astonishing. The event will be hosted by Phil Hellmuth and include poker pros Phil Ivey, Erik Seidel, Andy Frankenberger, and Layne Flack.
On top of that, special guest players will include Hank Azaria, James Blake, Billy Crudup, David Einhorn, Seth Gilliam, Allan Houston, Brian Koppelman, Alex Kovalev, Marc Lasry, John Starks, and Vince Van Patten. So whether you like sporty folks or voice actors from the Simpsons, you've got a chance to rub special elbows.
You can have a table with two of those special guests for the low, low registration fee of $250,000 (the Royal Flush Table). No, I did not stutter or mistype. If five years' worth of teacher salary is too steep, settle for the Straight Flush Table for only $100,000. Only one special guest for you, but hey, if you wanted two guests, you should have been more rich. You can get a table of ten with amenities for $50K or just a plain boring table for $20K. If you don't have friends, you can get a single seat for $2,000, and if you're just there to gawk, eat, drink, and play casino games, $250 is now looking like a highly reasonable cost.
It sure beats a bake sale. Who throws a party like this? Well, co-chair of the event is our old friend Whitney Tilson, which makes sense, since Education Reform Now is just another variation on DFER-- neo-lib high-rolling hedge funding education privatizers who do fun things like try to defeat local anti-reform candidates and have silly philosopher retreats to think deep thoughts about reform.
Frankly, I like the idea of the Network for Public Education or BATs buying a table or two, then sitting there making rude comments about charter schools, common core, and testing all night. But I'm afraid that my exclusive tailor, Jean-Claude Pennee, could not whip up something appropriate in time. And I'm sure it takes a certain level of wealth to set up and participate in an event like this without feeling a twinge of shame or irony. On the website for the event we can find information like this:
Mississippi’s average per pupil expenditure is $7,890 per year while New Jersey’s is $17,620, a disparity reflected across the nation. There is a ceiling, however, on what can be achieved through traditional approaches to resource re-allocation.
These are exactly the same people who declare that we have to get teacher pay under control and that you cannot improve public education by throwing money at it. Yes, throwing money at the education of children across America is a waste of money, money that could be spent on much more valuable and important things. But when the rich want to spend an evening throwing money at each other-- well, that's just good sense and great fun.
Monday, May 18, 2015
Proficient?
"Proficient" is having a moment right now, so perhaps this is an opportune moment to stop and reflect, to sit and think about how the term, like "all natural" and "college and career ready," doesn't actually mean a thing.
Okay, that's not entirely true. "Proficient" does have one very specific meaning-- "having scored above an arbitrarily set cut score on a Big Standardized Test." But like "student achievement" (which actually means "test scores"), it has been carefully chosen because it suggests so much more than it actually means. Like much of education reform rhetoric, it is that smouldering hottie that gives you a look across the room that promises all sort of soft, sweaty delights but who never delivers so much as a friendly peck on the cheek.
What could it even mean to call someone a proficient reader? Does it mean she can finish an entire novel? Does she have to understand it? Does she have to finish it in less than a month? A week? A year? Can it be any novel? Does it have to be a modern one, or can it be a classic? If I can get through The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn but not Moby Dick, am I still a proficient reader? If I read Huck Finn, but I just think it's a boy's adventure novel, and I proficient, or do I have to grasp the levels of satire to be proficient? Must I also be able to see symbolism tied to the search for identity in order to be proficient? What about poetry? Does someone have to be able to read poetry to be proficient? Any poetry? From any period? Is a proficient reader moved by what she reads, or does reading proficiency have to do only with the mechanics and thinky parts? And should proficient reader be able to read and follow instructions, say, for assembling a new media center? Would a proficient reader be able to follow the instructions even if the writer of the instructions was not a proficient English language writer? Can a proficient reader deal with any non-fiction reading? How about, say, Julian Jaynes Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind? Can a proficient reader read a whole Glenn Beck book and spot which parts are crap? Because that was some pretty heavy stuff! How about legal documents? Does a proficient reader read legal documents well enough to understand them sort of, or completely, or well enough to mount a capable counter-argument to the legal document? Would I count as proficient if I only ever read chunks of reading that were all 1000 words or less (like, say, blog posts), or does proficiency mean dealing with longer, more involved stuff? If college readiness is part of proficiency, does that mean a proficient reader is ready to do the assigned reading for a class on Italian Literature at Harvard or a class on Engineering at MIT or How To Talk Good at West Bogswallup Junior College? Will a proficient reader get A's? C's? And speaking of levels of ability, would a proficient reader read all of a Dan Brown or Stephanie Myers novel and know that it was terribly written? Would a proficient reader have made it all the way through this unnecessarily lengthy paragraph, or would a proficient reader have figured out that I was using bulk to make a rhetorical point and just skipped to the end?
Or does "proficient" just mean "able to manage the dribs and drabs of reading-related tasks that we can easily work into a standardized test"?
Because not only do we have to pretend that we actually know what "proficient" means, but we after we have drawn our lines around all of the complicated questions above, we have to go on to claim that we can glean a clear and accurate picture of that constellation of complex skills with one standardized test. In Pennsylvania, we are going to assess your proficiency with fifty-four questions, half of which are just plain old multiple choice bubble questions.
So the next time you read a piece like this thinky tank piece or this piece of ridiculous editorializing, keep in mind that all these people waxing philosophic about "proficient" might just as well be discussing the hair care preferences of yetis.
Okay, that's not entirely true. "Proficient" does have one very specific meaning-- "having scored above an arbitrarily set cut score on a Big Standardized Test." But like "student achievement" (which actually means "test scores"), it has been carefully chosen because it suggests so much more than it actually means. Like much of education reform rhetoric, it is that smouldering hottie that gives you a look across the room that promises all sort of soft, sweaty delights but who never delivers so much as a friendly peck on the cheek.
What could it even mean to call someone a proficient reader? Does it mean she can finish an entire novel? Does she have to understand it? Does she have to finish it in less than a month? A week? A year? Can it be any novel? Does it have to be a modern one, or can it be a classic? If I can get through The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn but not Moby Dick, am I still a proficient reader? If I read Huck Finn, but I just think it's a boy's adventure novel, and I proficient, or do I have to grasp the levels of satire to be proficient? Must I also be able to see symbolism tied to the search for identity in order to be proficient? What about poetry? Does someone have to be able to read poetry to be proficient? Any poetry? From any period? Is a proficient reader moved by what she reads, or does reading proficiency have to do only with the mechanics and thinky parts? And should proficient reader be able to read and follow instructions, say, for assembling a new media center? Would a proficient reader be able to follow the instructions even if the writer of the instructions was not a proficient English language writer? Can a proficient reader deal with any non-fiction reading? How about, say, Julian Jaynes Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind? Can a proficient reader read a whole Glenn Beck book and spot which parts are crap? Because that was some pretty heavy stuff! How about legal documents? Does a proficient reader read legal documents well enough to understand them sort of, or completely, or well enough to mount a capable counter-argument to the legal document? Would I count as proficient if I only ever read chunks of reading that were all 1000 words or less (like, say, blog posts), or does proficiency mean dealing with longer, more involved stuff? If college readiness is part of proficiency, does that mean a proficient reader is ready to do the assigned reading for a class on Italian Literature at Harvard or a class on Engineering at MIT or How To Talk Good at West Bogswallup Junior College? Will a proficient reader get A's? C's? And speaking of levels of ability, would a proficient reader read all of a Dan Brown or Stephanie Myers novel and know that it was terribly written? Would a proficient reader have made it all the way through this unnecessarily lengthy paragraph, or would a proficient reader have figured out that I was using bulk to make a rhetorical point and just skipped to the end?
Or does "proficient" just mean "able to manage the dribs and drabs of reading-related tasks that we can easily work into a standardized test"?
Because not only do we have to pretend that we actually know what "proficient" means, but we after we have drawn our lines around all of the complicated questions above, we have to go on to claim that we can glean a clear and accurate picture of that constellation of complex skills with one standardized test. In Pennsylvania, we are going to assess your proficiency with fifty-four questions, half of which are just plain old multiple choice bubble questions.
So the next time you read a piece like this thinky tank piece or this piece of ridiculous editorializing, keep in mind that all these people waxing philosophic about "proficient" might just as well be discussing the hair care preferences of yetis.
The Ballast
I worry about the ballast.
Charter fans brag about their successes. They tell the starfish story. They will occasionally own that their successes are, in fact, about selecting out the strivers, the winners, the students who are, in fact, their own children and allowing them to rise. And it is no small thing that many students have had an opportunity to rise in a charter setting.
But I worry about the ballast.
How do these lucky few rise? The charter doesn't have better teachers. In many cases the charter doesn't have a single pedagogical technique or instructional program that is a bit different from its public school counterparts. What it has is a concentration of students who are supported, committed, and capable.
Those students are able to rise because the school, like the pilot of a hot air balloon, has shed the ballast, the extra weight that is holding them down. It's left behind, abandoned. There's no plan to go back for it, rescue it somehow. Just cut it loose. Let it go. Out of sight, out of mind. We dump those students in a public school, but we take the supplies, the resources, the money, and send it on with the students we've decided are Worth Saving.
This may be why the charter model so often involves starting over in another school-- because the alternative would be to stay in the same school and tell Those Students, the ones without motivation or support or unhindered learning tools, to get out. As those students were sent away so that strivers could succeed, it would just be too obvious that we are achieving success for some students by discarding others.
The ballast model is an echo of a common attitude about poverty. If you are poor, it's because you chose badly, because you didn't try hard enough, because you don't have grit, because you lack character, because you deserve to be poor. Insert story here of some person who was born poor and use grit and determination and hard work to become successful, thereby proving that anyone who is still poor has nobody to blame but himself. Just repeat that narrative, but instead of saying "if you are poor" say "if you are a poor student."
This is a societal model based on discarding people. This is a school model based on discarding students.
Because after all, if a student is failing, that is because the student is faulty, or possibly the teacher. Even learning disabilities, we've been told, have no effect on the student's achievement if the teacher's expectations are high and the student has grit.
So I guess that makes it okay to discard the ballast, the extra weight that is holding the Better People back.
I repeat-- it is no small thing that some students are carried aloft, lifted high among the clouds in that basket of high achievement.
But I keep thinking of the ballast. Somebody cuts a rope, and the heavy bag goes rocketing downward, plummeting to earth and disappear in a cloud of impact far below. Except they aren't just bags of dirt. They are human beings.
That's the charter model. Cut loose all the dead weight, all the students who aren't good enough, who cost to much time and trouble and money to lift up. This is one more reason that public school folks remain unimpressed by charter "success"-- we always knew that cutting loose the ballast would help everyone else, but our mandate is to lift everyone, not just the chosen few.
Maybe cutting loose the ballast is necessary. Maybe we've decided that's how school should work now. But we should at least be honest and have that discussion, not just cut the ballast loose while nobody is paying attention and then declare, "Well, look, we're headed up now. It's like magic!" If we're going to abandon ten students in order to rescue one, we need to talk about whether or not we're okay with that. We might even have conversation about getting a bigger balloon, one with enough lift to carry everyone and not just the chosen few.
I am glad that a few more students are being lifted up, and that is no small thing. But still, I worry about the ballast.
Charter fans brag about their successes. They tell the starfish story. They will occasionally own that their successes are, in fact, about selecting out the strivers, the winners, the students who are, in fact, their own children and allowing them to rise. And it is no small thing that many students have had an opportunity to rise in a charter setting.
But I worry about the ballast.
How do these lucky few rise? The charter doesn't have better teachers. In many cases the charter doesn't have a single pedagogical technique or instructional program that is a bit different from its public school counterparts. What it has is a concentration of students who are supported, committed, and capable.
Those students are able to rise because the school, like the pilot of a hot air balloon, has shed the ballast, the extra weight that is holding them down. It's left behind, abandoned. There's no plan to go back for it, rescue it somehow. Just cut it loose. Let it go. Out of sight, out of mind. We dump those students in a public school, but we take the supplies, the resources, the money, and send it on with the students we've decided are Worth Saving.
This may be why the charter model so often involves starting over in another school-- because the alternative would be to stay in the same school and tell Those Students, the ones without motivation or support or unhindered learning tools, to get out. As those students were sent away so that strivers could succeed, it would just be too obvious that we are achieving success for some students by discarding others.
The ballast model is an echo of a common attitude about poverty. If you are poor, it's because you chose badly, because you didn't try hard enough, because you don't have grit, because you lack character, because you deserve to be poor. Insert story here of some person who was born poor and use grit and determination and hard work to become successful, thereby proving that anyone who is still poor has nobody to blame but himself. Just repeat that narrative, but instead of saying "if you are poor" say "if you are a poor student."
This is a societal model based on discarding people. This is a school model based on discarding students.
Because after all, if a student is failing, that is because the student is faulty, or possibly the teacher. Even learning disabilities, we've been told, have no effect on the student's achievement if the teacher's expectations are high and the student has grit.
So I guess that makes it okay to discard the ballast, the extra weight that is holding the Better People back.
I repeat-- it is no small thing that some students are carried aloft, lifted high among the clouds in that basket of high achievement.
But I keep thinking of the ballast. Somebody cuts a rope, and the heavy bag goes rocketing downward, plummeting to earth and disappear in a cloud of impact far below. Except they aren't just bags of dirt. They are human beings.
That's the charter model. Cut loose all the dead weight, all the students who aren't good enough, who cost to much time and trouble and money to lift up. This is one more reason that public school folks remain unimpressed by charter "success"-- we always knew that cutting loose the ballast would help everyone else, but our mandate is to lift everyone, not just the chosen few.
Maybe cutting loose the ballast is necessary. Maybe we've decided that's how school should work now. But we should at least be honest and have that discussion, not just cut the ballast loose while nobody is paying attention and then declare, "Well, look, we're headed up now. It's like magic!" If we're going to abandon ten students in order to rescue one, we need to talk about whether or not we're okay with that. We might even have conversation about getting a bigger balloon, one with enough lift to carry everyone and not just the chosen few.
I am glad that a few more students are being lifted up, and that is no small thing. But still, I worry about the ballast.
Teacher Diversity Matters
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.
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.
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.
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