The Human-Proof Classroom

            I am a big believer in having a teacher toolbox chock full of many and varied tools. I also believe that just because a tool doesn't work well for me, that doesn't mean it can't work for someone else.

            Nevertheless, there are some approaches that simply don't belong in a classroom ever.


            Take scripting. Scripted lessons have been with us for a while, even before the folks at EngageNY decided that having teachers travel in lockstep through units was somehow a good idea.

            Scripting has always had apologists. Way back in 2007, Georgia teacher educator Michelle Commeyras took to the pages of the Phi Delta Kappa magazine to make a half-hearted case for scripting. Commeyras traces the modern scripted lesson back to Siegfried Engelmann and Carl Bereiter, "who in the 1960s developed the direct instruction method of teaching reading to raise the academic success of inner-city children." This is unsurprising; rich school districts will be looking for teachers who know what they're talking about, not those who need a script.

            Commeyras shared my attitude--at first. But she insisted that the more she watched teachers work from scripts, the more she saw good teachers who made individual choices. In other words, they worked over and above the script. Beyond the script. Off the script. Which is kind of my point. If you need a script to work in a classroom, you don't belong in a classroom.

            Commeyras was writing in 2007, before the newest, biggest wave of reformsterism hit the beach like a tanker full of whale carcasses, each one of those carcasses stamped "teacher-proof." Publishers promised programs that could not be bollixed up by a teacher. Just open the box, hand out the materials, read the script, and deliver the content.

            Commeyras offered an analogy that has been oft-repeated--it's just like having an actor read a script, bringing the character to life through the actor's choices, movement, reading, and action. Different actors can still make different choices; Ryan Gosling and Mel Brooks would make very different Hamlets.

            But the actor analogy doesn't hold up. Actors and playwrights collaborate to bring a character to life, to put a living breathing human in front of the audience. Manufacturers of teaching scripts are doing the opposite--doing their best to erase every tiny piece of real, live human from the teacher's performance. Shakespeare wrote lines and it makes all the difference who reads them. But it's supposed to make no difference at all which "actor" delivers a Success for All lesson.

            But reading Edushyster today made me realize just how much worse things have gotten. Amy Berard's account of being coached in the No Nonsense Nurturing school of schooling is profoundly horrifying, with Berard forced to work with an earpiece so that her edu-coaches can admonish her to stop using inflection and personality in her speaking while being sure to "narrate" the class aloud, a technique so ludicrously mockable that, in fact, her students started mocking it.

          I had no choice but to go look up the masters of No Nonsense Nurturing, and it's a dark, sad picture. I found plenty of thick websitery to wade through, but some kind soul has distilled a presentation down to the high points, which is less depressing than reading a full syllabus.

          There is literally nothing here you haven't seen before. Don't be an enabler. No excuses. Give precise instructions. Keep your vocal affect flat. Lee Canter. A color-coded behavior system. Attention-commanding signals (like a hand clap and response). Ignore negative behavior, but visit "consequences" upon it (unless you reach level Red, in which case send the kid to the office). Oh, and "be authentic" (which they must have been skipping over the day they told Berard that her voice was pitched too high).

         There are two striking features of this program.

         The first reminds me of the knd of management training we used to mock at my old summer job, the kind of training where folks are taught to mimic the behavior of carbon-based life forms (always use the other person's name to address them). It's not that some of this is not correct. It's that if you need to be told to do it, you probably will not do it well, at all. If you are focusing on positive behaviors according to a system instead of according to sense, you're probably doing it in a highly artificial and ineffective way.

          But the other feature I'm struck by is how this goes scripted lessons one better. Our old goal was to teacher proof the classroom, but NNN also minimizes the importance of the individual student as well. Like the no excuses schools that it fits so well with (one of the endorsements comes from a KIPP school boass), it demands that students take their places as cogs in a machine.

         The reformster dream is not teacher-centered learning or student-centered learning or even curriculum-based learning. This is a classroom centered around a content delivery system, and every one-- teachers, students, parents, strangers on the street-- is to submit themselves to the system.

        On the NNN summary I found these two statements of belief parked unironically side by side:

        I have to earn the respect of my students.
        I expect 100% compliance from all of my students, 100% of the time.

        Compliance and respect have nothing do with each other, but systems demand compliance. Teachers must comply with the system. Students must comply with the teachers. The content and testing will be designed for easiest compliance. Our content delivery module will be teacher-proof, student-proof, and just generally proof against all of the relationships, feelings, humanity and individuality that humans cart around like a pile of messy, unwelcome baggage. All will serve their rightful master-- the system.
      
        Originally posted in View from the Cheap Seats

Winning International Competition

Hey, look! According to reporting in the New York Times and the Washington Post, some jobs are coming back from China. I wonder why that is.

The NYT piece by Hiroko Tabuchi focuses on the textile industry. Currently some Chinese companies are opening plants in the American South; the piece is anchored by a look at a worker from the Chinese plant training American workers to do her job in a highly automated plant that may use as few as 500 workers.

Why is this happening? Are the heads of these corporations saying, "Wow! Now that a generation of workers have grown up with the Common Core and had their educational achievement certified by high stakes standardized tests, we totally want to come employ these workers who are clearly bastions of international competitiveness." Or perhaps the bosses are saying, "These Chinese workers just don't have the deep level of educational achievement that

Well, no. They're not. From Ana Swenson's piece in the Washington Post:

Even when adjusted for productivity, Chinese manufacturing wages have risen by 187 percent over the decade. Industrial electricity costs have grown 66 percent, while natural gas costs are up 138 percent.
 
In the same time frame, U.S. wages have risen only 27 percent, while natural gas costs have fallen 25 percent, according to Boston Consulting.

Yes, shockingly, the international competition is about what it's always been about-- money. Having textiles manufactured in China by workers who work for peanuts in the cheapest of manufacturing conditions used to be the winning formula. Now Chinese want more pay, and demand has pushed up the cost of running manufacturing facilities.

Competing for those jobs is not about having the best public school educational standards. It has never been about that. It's about mustering a competent work force that will work cheap in cheap conditions. As both stories note, the textile plants opening do not represent a sudden change and surge. But they do represent examples of how the international competition for jobs will be won-- and it won't be by jamming our students through a one-size-fits-all, test-driven system based on "college and career ready" standards.

Couple Days Off

I have just returned from a few days on a lake in Maine with my lovely wife. We had a window of opportunity and cause to celebrate (my wife will be back where she belongs—in a classroom—come the fall), so we hopped in the car and headed north for some r & r.

We stayed in a cabin that my grandfather (a general contractor) built back in the fifties. It’s quiet, and this weekend it was clear and perfect

It is also completely without wi-fi, so I’ve been unplugged for several days (our phones are not smart, not even a little bit wise). But with the time to sit and read and reflect cut off from the torrent of information, I’ve found some renewed focus about a few things. I learned some stuff on my summer vacation.

Well, in some cases I've simply confirmed old knowledge. Devil Dogs are awful, but I love them anyway. They seem to made of chocolate tinged cardboard and fluff, but they taste like summer and home and outdoors to me. Also, with all due respect to my friends in the pilgrim state, all residents of Massachusetts should have their cars confiscated and they should never be allowed to drive ever again.

What I’ve learned is that while I can go a while without being able to check the blogs and the news and e-mail (I worry about the Nigerian prince), I have a powerful need to be able to look stuff up. It reminds me that we live in such a miraculous time, a time in which we have access to mountains of information—it’s almost like being smart. At the very least, the internet has changed what it means to be smart—but the inequity of access means the internet is also one more amplifier of the gap between the haves and have-nots. I need to find ways to address all of that in my classroom.

We read a bunch while we were up north. I read a bio of Edwin Drake, Our Children, The Cage-Busting Teacher, and The Warmth of Other Suns (and re-read Teach Like Your Hair’s On Fire). Each read alone has a lot of interesting things to say; read together, they struck a few extra sparks in my brain. I’ll get back to you with some of it in this space. I’m glad to learn that I can still read entire books.

I've relearned something I learned earlier this summer-- when you are in the ongoing stream of news and reaction and dissection and re-reaction, you lose sight of just how quickly it moves (Chris Christie wants to punch who??). Earlier this summer I absolutely depended on Mercedes Schneider to report on the ESEA rewrite amendments, because I had a new round of rehearsals, a dying refrigerator, and some family business to attend to. In other words, I was having trouble keeping up because I was dealing with the exact sort of everyday stuff that ordinary people deal with. Sometimes it takes all of peoples' time and attention just to live their lives-- we can't be shocked, surprised, or upset that people busy with life didn't take a few hours to read up on the latest eruption in the education policy world (or dozens of hours over the last month to understand the context). This is one of the advantages that the thinky tank guys and the lobbyists and the policy wonks have-- their everyday life IS keeping up with this stuff. For people who have actual lives, it's more of a challenge. Having a network-- and being part of a network-- is critical to the mission of defending public education.

Likewise, I've learned that it can be worth it to take your head out of the unending high-speed swirly that is the education debate to stop and clear your brain a bit and remember what we care about, why we care about it, and what we want to do about it. It's easy to get caught up in the one-damn-thing-after-another of it all.

It's a marathon, not a sprint. Never give up and never surrender. But run too fast, too hard, too much of the time, and you not only run the risk of not finishing, but you lose track of where the finish line even is.

Eyes Right

This is actually a delayed post, because technology is awesome.

My wife and I have left the dog and my mother-in-law in charge of the house while we travel to the family cabin in Maine. My grandfather, a New Hampshire general contractor, built it ages ago as a hunting cabin on what was then an isolated lake (Great East Lake, for those of you who like your geography). There have been upgrades since, but the place is still isolated enough to have limited phone coverage and no Wi-fi. So I'm taking some days off.

While I'm AFK, I recommend that you take a look at the list of blogs that trails down the right-hand column of this blog. There are many mighty fine writers there as well as people who do much of the heavy lifting in the research arena of the debate about US public education.

I could tell you more, but why read about them when you could read them. So if you're a regular fan of this blog, take the time you would have spent reading my blathering today and acquaint yourself with one of these wise individuals.

NC Education of Tomorrow

Raleigh, North Carolina, April 2019

Political leaders gathered to celebrate today as Department of Education bulldozers upgraded the last NC public school, replacing it with a picturesque park.

"It has been a long road," said State Education Biggifier Harlen McDimbulb, overseeing the work as the dozer knocked down the last chart-encrusted data wall. "But our big breakthrough came with the court ruling that certified our voucher system back there a few years. That finally allowed us to get money and support to outstanding schools like God Loves White Guys High and Aryan Academy. Great private schools were being denied public tax dollars just because they wouldn't teach state-approved so-called 'fact' and 'science.'"

"Vouchers opened the door," said Assistant Secretary of Money Laundering Chauncey Gotbux. "But with the court's blessing, we were finally able to use public education tax dollars as they were meant to be used-- as a source of profit for people who deserve it."

Asked about the looseness of oversight and accountability for the tax dollars, Gotbux replied, "When you give the money to the right people, you can trust that they do the right thing with it."

"There were some serious problems," admitted Golly Mugbungle of the Greater North Carolina School Choice Initiative Authority. "We quickly streamlined the process so that non-public schools could get their money just by asking for it and completing a simple yet rigorous form. But since the form only asked 'Are you a school' and we had no follow-up investigation to look at those claims, we discovered that we were mistakenly sending tax dollars to public schools." He chuckled nostalgically. "Yeah, we had to shut that down pretty quickly."

"The upgrade of public education in NC required several different initiatives," said McDimbulb. "It helped to set up a clear choice for parents-- would you rather have your child trapped in third grade forever while he tries to pass the state's reading exam, or in a fun private school where reading is only occasionally taught at all? Do you want your child stuck in a school where she has to sit in rooms with the children of Those People, or do you want her to be able to relax with children of the right kind of folks?"

"Initially the exodus was a little too slow," added Mugbungle. "We helped that along with the Furniture and Accessories Initiative of 2017. Under that law, public schools, in addition to the funding that they had to give up through vouchers, were required to give desks, chairs, tables and clocks to any private school that asked for them. The cost savings to private schools that no longer had to come up with, say, their own roofing or parking lot asphalt were considerable. At one point we were looking at ways to strip the paint off public school walls and give it to private schools, but that just wasn't feasible."

McDimbulb interjected. "The teacher part of the puzzle stumped us for a while. You recall the courts told us we couldn't just cancel tenure or their pensions. We thought not giving them a raise for almost a decade might do it, but again, progress was just too slow." He shook his head and smiled. "We could not get them pesky sumbitches to give up-- like cockroaches. So the Teacher Excellence Protection To Excel Act of 2017 right-sized the teacher pay scale so that we have actually reduced their salaries each year, thereby protecting teachers from the stress of having to decide what to do with disposable income. We are proud to say that base salary for a teacher in North Carolina is now $147.53. The three teachers receiving that pay seem quite satisfied with it."

"To fill teacher-ish jobs, the alternative certificate program has been highly successful. You've probably seen our Teaching Certificate Vending Machines in most major super-markets. We share the revenue with TFA and it has worked well for us," said Gotbux. "Anybody with a couple of quarters to rub together can become part of the exciting world of education."

"People have questioned the quality of many of our Private Education Fund Recipients (what y'all sometimes call schools), and we are proud to say that as officials of the state government, we have no idea, " said McDimbulb.

Gotbux laughed and corrected him. "MY salary is actually paid by the charter school industry."

"Anyway," McDimbulb continued, "we think it's best that we not meddle with the private schools in any way, so we try to stay completely ignorant of what they're doing. Though I do hear rumors from time to time. Why, I heard tell of one innovative program where science class is built around old Flintstones videos. How clever is that? The Flintstones are a great way to combine historical lessons with humor."

"There are some public school students left," said McDimbulb. "We'll be pitching a nice tent for them to have classes in right over there. We expect to set up the tent next Monday, and then Tuesday we'll be fining the school for holding classes in a tent. We need to get them off this lot because we have plans to put up a statue of Jesus riding a dinosaur here."

Kansas: Digging a Deeper Hole

News came two weeks ago that Kansas has taken a bold new step in making their schools Even Worse. The story is one of how several current trends intersect to drag schools backwards in defiance of common sense or educational concern.

July 14, the Kansas State Board of Education voted to allow unlicensed people to teach in Kansas schools.

Their motivations are not hard to explain. Kansas has entered the Chase Teachers Out of The State derby, joining states like North Carolina and Arizona in the attempt to make teaching unappealing as a career and untenable as a way for grown-ups to support a family. Kansas favors the two-pronged technique. With one prong, you strip teachers of job protections and bargaining rights, so that you can fire them at any time for any reason and pay them as little as you like. With the other prong, you strip funding from schools, so that teachers have to accomplish more and more on a budget of $1.95 (and if they can't get it done, see prong number one).

The result is predictable. Kansas is solidly settled onto the list of Places Teachers Work As Their Very Last Choice.It's working out great for Missouri; their school districts have teacher recruitment billboards up in Kansas. But in Kansas, there's a teacher shortage.

Kansas is not alone. Indiana is also among the many states with fewer new teachers in the pipeline than ever.

How to solve the problem?

You would think with so many free market fans making their mark in the edubiz these days, the answer would be both obvious and widely discussed. Because the free market really does understand this problem. If I want to buy goods and services from you, and you won't sell to me at the price I propose, my choices are A) do without, B) get a cheap substitute, C) rob you or D) offer you more money. Even basic economics students understand supply and demand.

But all these free market acolytes keep looking at teacher shortages, scratching their heads, and saying, "Golly bob howdy, but I don't know how we could possibly convince teachers to come fill these jobs."

Well, not all of them. Some look at the dismantling of public education and say, "Excellent! Glad to be rid of it." And others have said, "Teachers shmeachers. Any shmoe can teach school."
Kansas now joins the latter group.

They haven't gone whole spam (because who needs the whole hog, amiright?) yet. Kansas will only be allowing unqualified people in the classrooms of poor students in poor districts, specifically the Innovation Districts that have been given special dispensation to skip certain state regulations.

Meanwhile in other news, a newly-released piece of research suggests that poor students in poor neighborhoods get the least qualified, least effective teachers out there. There are many debatable points in that research, but there's no denying that Kansas is making a concerted and determined effort to make it true. The Kansas legislature could not more effectively drive their school system straight to the bottom if they sat down for a strategy meeting to answer the question, "How Can We Make Our Schools the Very Worst in the West?" (Okay, that's not entirely fair-- I'm sure that none of Kansas's wealthy districts will be getting unqualified people off the street in their classrooms.)

UPDATE/CORRECTION: In fact, there is at least one very wealthy district that is in on this game. It does reduce the awfulness of the rest of this plan, but it does mean that Kansas is not simply targeting poor schools for this special treatment.

Look, boys-- it's not rocket surgery. The Kansas City Royals were a giant suckfest from 1985 to the early 2010's, in no small part because they insisted on getting rid of any players who got expensive and because players were not in a hurry to play for losers. Then they decided to build their team up by offering competitive salaries and better playing conditions. Team owners did not declare, "Since it's hard to recruit, let's just grab some guys off the street and put them out on the field."

The Kansas legislature either wants to destroy their public education system, or they're dopes. Perhaps how they react to the Board of Education decision will give us a clue. Keep trying, boys. Missouri is cheering for you.

Originally posted at View from the Cheap Seats

Rick Hess's Cage-Busting Lessons

Rick Hess has been busy promoting his book about Cage-Busting Teachers, and he reported ten lessons that he learned out on the circuit. As always I find Hess worth paying attention to because (unlike some of his reformy brethren) he's not sloppy or lazy in his thinking. So what did he learn (and, by extension, think the rest of us should get)?

1) Schools and leaders are hungry for teacher leadership. Well, they say they are. Which, of course, is often the problem. Most of us have had encounters with administrators who project a clear message of, "I would love to see some teachers step up and become leaders in pursuit of exactly what I tell them to pursue." This is a recurring issue that I have with Hess's cage-busting model. Sometimes the cages are built strong, wired with electricity, and coated in poisonous venom.

2) Advocates on all sides of the reform/public ed issue love the idea of cage busting teachers. I think that's probably true, but only if we get that there's a wide number of ideas about what a CBT is and what obstacles need to be busted.

3) Hess agrees. Everybody likes CBT, but nobody knows how to grow them. I have some thoughts. But Step One is for administrators to let go of the notion that teacher leadership has to look like they want it to and result in the outcomes they demand.

4) Reformers have focused too much on getting rid of bad teachers, while teachers have not focused on it enough, but everybody should focus more on giving great teachers what they need. Hess is landing near the Hero Teacher Fallacy here, but he's not completely wrong. Guys like Andy Cuomo who believe that there are a gazillion terrible teachers who just need to be found and jettisoned are wasting their time.

5) Veteran teachers are used to a culture that has no respect for excellence. Yes, I'd say that's true. And this:

I've been struck at how enthusiastically these educators describe the lift provided by modest recognition, and how appreciative they are for some of the perks that twenty-something policy types take for granted.

Yup. I've argued for years that money discussion would be less contentious at contract time if districts just offered to treat teachers like respected grown-ups. But they don't.

6) Teachers don't code switch. Sigh. I hate it, but I know he's right. Too many teachers don't get how to function in places that aren't their classroom, and are bad at the most essential part of dealing with people-- understanding what those peoples' priorities and foci are. The most cringeworthy argument I hear teachers make to advocate against a policy is offering some version of, "But this makes me sad.."

At the same time, it's hard not to resent the underlying power dynamic here-- to be heard, teachers have to learn to speak the language of policymakers and boardrooms and suits and even think tanks. Why is it that none of these people have bothered to try learning our language?

7) Reasonable and polite teachers should speak up. We know that Hess prefers his cage busters polite and genteel and not speaking up loudly, rudely or at inappropriate moments. This remains the weakest part of Hess's position-- he's concern trolling and tone police in one, worried that if teachers speak up too loudly or too rudely, gosh, they just won't be taken seriously by the People Who Matter. I won't deny that there are some teachers who are in a seemingly permanent state of High Dudgeon (and reformsters who are stuck in a state of Righteous Crusading Against Infidels). But I'm reminded of something I've said often-- if people don't believe they are being heard when they speak, they will keep raising their voice. If someone is yelling at me, nine times out of ten it's because they don't believe I hear them. If I don't like being yelled at, it is often within my power to stop it. It's not that I'll listen to them when they adopt a proper tone; it's that when they know I'm listening, they'll get quieter on their own. Just saying.

8) While Hess reminds us that reformsters by and large mean well, he reminds reformsters that teachers actually have to make all these bright ideas work.

That power and precision accorded to accountability systems, teacher evaluation systems, turnaround models, and the rest is sometimes disturbingly disconnected from an interest in how this affects the actual work of the teachers who are expected to make these deliver.

9) Teachers surprise Hess by actually being quite open to New Stuff. Well, yes. We're always looking at new stuff, trying new things, and experimenting like Doofenshmirtz hunting for a great new Teachinator. Reformsters have made this mistake over and over and over and over again, assuming that because we don't like their stupid new idea, we don't like any new ideas at all. Reformsters consistently fail to ask the question that teachers, experimenting in our classroom every day, always ask-- Does this actually work? Does this actually help me teach students?

10) Policymakers and Other Important People listen to teachers better when teachers provide concrete specific examples of what they're talking about. Fair enough.

My cage busting problem (and I freely confess that I have not yet read the book) is that Hess's whole model seems to assume a maintenance of a certain power status, with teachers on the bottom. In the wrong light, Hess starts to sound like a solicitous parent saying, "Of course, you can come sit at the grown-up table, just as soon as you act grown-up and show us that you can handle it."

What he says sounds reasonable, and it may in fact be a clear dose of Realpolitik, but to get at what troubles me, let me propose an alternative book. In this book Hess (or someone) says, "For too long we've been trying to keep teachers locked up and constrained, forcing them into the shape we demand of them. So let's release them from the cage we've built for them. Let's stop talking to them about how to do their job, shut our mouths, sit down and listen to the experts, the teachers who have devoted their lives to education. And maybe after we have listened and learned, we can prove to them that we deserve to be listened to and our ideas deserve to be considered. But first we need to free them to do the work they know." The author of this imaginary book could call it Cage-Busting Policymakers.

But that's not the book he wrote. And while teachers do need to step up and are (and have been) doing most of the heavy lifting of the teaching world, Hess's assumption that of course policymakers, whether elected or self-appointed, are rightfully in charge, and teachers are, by default, rightfully not.

Hess's best insight is that too many teachers are so used to being caged and powerless that they don't test the limits and they don't break through some bars that are weak and pointless and deserve to be busted. But he is disingenuous to avoid acknowledging where those cages came from in the first place, or the huge number of new cages that have been built in the last fifteen years.

Damn. I'm going to have to read his book.