I really thought I was going to fumble the ball this week. A combination of working the second weekend of our production of The Fantasticks, beginning-of-year in-service days, ninth grade orientation, organizing a 5K race, etc etc etc-- well, I got a bit behind on my own reading. But yesterday and today I stumbled over several must-reads for the week. I know it's a little late in the day (matinee and set strike), but here's some Sunday evening reading for you--
The Blackout
Jose Luis Vilson gives some articulate clarity to the questions raised by supporters of public schools who really think that black folks should stop pestering Presidential candidates and start getting with the right team.
Left Behind
Here's your if-you-only-read-one-thing selection for the week. This fully-researched series of articles looks at exactly how school choice plays out, and how it leaves the most challenged students behind in a half-empty school stripped of the resources they desperately need. The journalists here take a close-up look at North Charleston High in South Carolina, and the story is thorough, from individual student stories to some very handy interactive graphics that help the reader understand exactly what is happening. A well-told, fully-supported story of the worst side-effects of choice.
The Reality Television Paradigm of All Charter Systems
Sarah Tepper Blaine takes a look at the implications of a system like New Orleans means to our system of public education, and for students on the losing end of a two tier system.
The Myth of the New Orleans Makeover
Well, lookee here! The New York Times runs yet another criticism of the New Orleans sort-of-a-miracle.
Finally, google Dyett High Hunger Strike
and read whatever you can find that's the most current account of what's going on in the struggle for Dyett High parents to make their voices heard. If nothing else, check this link for the newest updates there. Spread the word.
As a bonus this week, I suggest that you read all five of the suggestions, because taken together, they suggest the outlines of the larger picture that's showing its iceberg head above the education waters.
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Dyett High Hunger Strike: Things To Know
Today, the twelve parents engaged in a hunger strike in support of Dyett High School in the Chicago southside neighborhood of Bronzeville are marking their first full week of their action. Here are some things to know.
What Is This About?
In 2012, Chicago Public Schools decided to close Dyett, allowing the last freshman class to finish their education there if they wished. Only a handful wished (and they were reportedly pressured by CPS to wish differently), but they're done, and the time has come to decide what Dyett will become.
There are three proposals out there.
First, an arts and design academy to be run by Little Black Pearl, an arts group that has shown no particular expertise in running charter schools. I would provide a link, but for whatever reason, all attempts to get to littleblackpearl.org a 403 forbidden message. Second, an athletics-based school backed by Dyett principal Charles Campbell. The Sun-Times also links a Mark Coleman to the proposal as a guy who runs a nonprofit, but I can't find anything about him. I can, however, find a Mark Coleman who runs a media company that specializes in lining up financing for big projects-- that Mark Coleman lists Barack Obama and Ari Emmanuel as his "influencers," but that could be some other Mark Coleman. The athletics school proposal came in after the CPS deadline for proposals.
The third proposal, the Dyett Global Leadership and Green Technology High School, came from the community itself, early and complete with a partnership with DuSable University, Chicago Botanical Gardens and others. You can read the whole proposal here.
(Nobody, it should be noted, is proposing a group of robust charters so that the people of Bronzeville can have many excellent local choices.)
Um, Wait a Minute
In a poor, black neighborhood of Chicago, there's an outside proposal for entertainment industry, an outside proposal for sports, and a community proposal for science, technology and leadership. I respect athletics, and you know I love the arts, but you tell me which one of these proposals sets the highest aspirations for the children of this community.
Bronzeville is poor, but they have worked hard for their school (back in 2011, just before the district dropped the hammer, they won a grant from ESPN to rebuild their athletic facilities with big fancy upgrades like working handles for doors). They were improving and growing stronger. There's no question they needed some help, but a search doesn't turn up stories suggesting that Dyett was some sort of notorious hellhole in freefall.
So, What's Really Going On
Well, Dyett is located in the northern end of Washington Park, a very desirable chunk of real estate that is one of the two locations in the running to be the location of Barack Obama's Presidential Library. In fact, the proposed location is within a stone's throw of Dyett.
In fact, Washington Park seems to have been in the crosshairs for many years. Back in 2008, when Chicago was feeling the Olympic love, Washington Park was called one of the hottest neighborhoods, a diamond in the rough, and there is still talk about turning it into a community that could attract and support business, arts, and all the trappings of gentrification. And gentrification is a concern in Bronzeville, just as many see it as a hallmark of Rahm Emanuel's tenure as mayor.
But What Is Actually Happening?
CPS is stalling. There were going to be meetings and hearings to settle this decision. They were going to happen this summer, but finally were pushed back all the way out of August into September because-- well, I can't even say "because reason." Just because. The hunger strikers would like the school district to do the right thing, and it's pretty clear that doing nothing while waiting for the community to stop paying attention just isn't going to work.
Why Don't I Know About Any of This
If you google "Dyett hunger strike Chicago Tribune," the only thing you'll see about Chicago's major media outlet is comments about how it's not covering this at all.
Rather than rail about corrupt and incompetent media, I want to just make an observation here. Because you know what would get the Dyett parents in the media? If they blew something up or set something on fire or took some sort of violent, disruptive action that resulted in a few vanloads of police showing up.
That would be followed by a bunch of handwringing and concern trolling and tone policing and people saying, "Well, I understand they're upset, but if black folks want to be taken seriously and earn a hearing for their concerns, they need to be more reasonable and proper in their tone. They need to work within the system. They need to not be so disruptive and take such a confrontational tone. They're just hurting their own cause. I might have been sympathetic if they hadn't resorted to such unseemly behavior."
The parents of Dyett have done it all by the book. They developed their own proposals and presented them. They have petitioned and remonstrated. They have been ignored.
And this is what is most striking to me-- rather than take action against property or other people, the parents of Dyett are taking action against themselves. They are committing a slow-motion act of violence against themselves.
They have approached this exactly as people who complain about protests and civil disobedience and civil disruption say they want, and what do the parents of Dyett get for their carefully calibrated and heart-wrenching action? What they get is an indifferent media and a public that doesn't pay attention because someone who's slowly starving just isn't very exciting.
So everybody who complained about things like the acting out in Fergusson and the other protests that have popped up in the news over the last year, everybody who said, "You know, I think they have a real point and these issues of racial inequity really bother me, but I can't support such destructive misbehavior"-- here's your chance to put up or shut up. You can support the parents of Dyett in their quiet measured stand against the silencing of community members, the suspension of democracy, the trampling of people in a community just because they're black and they're poor and they don't have rich and powerful friends to help them in city hall, or you can admit you just don't give a rat's rear about any of that, and you can admit that non-wealthy non-white folks in this country have little choice except to be loud and rude and disruptive in this country. In either case, I don't want to hear concern trolling and tone policing out of you ever again.
Dyett Is Bigger Than Chicago
Dyett is everything that reformsters say they want-- an engaged and energized community that has shown a willingness to do the bootstrappy work needed to turn their own school, guided by their vision of they want for their children. Their vision is big and global and challenging and loaded with high standards, as well as a vision of using the school to anchor a rising and advancing of their entire community. If reformsters aren't going to speak up for the community and public school in this situation, they never will.
The Dyett hunger strike isn't just about the future of Bronzeville and the fate of the last of the open-enrollment public schools in the area. It's about reformsters being caught in their lies, about being given what they said they wanted and finding an excuse to turn it down so that they can do what they actually wanted all along-- profiteering and a charter system that strips democracy from Those People while busting up their neighborhood. Without a national change in course, sooner or later, all of us will be in Dyett's shoes.
For More Information
This site will lead you to most of the important up-to-date resources. Teachers for Social Justice also has an eye on things. Anthony Cody's Living in Dialogue has been paying attention. And the following clip presents more insight from Jitu Brown and Pauline Lippman-- it's a good quick summary to send to your friends who aren't so into the whole reading thing.
Send support. Spread the word.
What Is This About?
In 2012, Chicago Public Schools decided to close Dyett, allowing the last freshman class to finish their education there if they wished. Only a handful wished (and they were reportedly pressured by CPS to wish differently), but they're done, and the time has come to decide what Dyett will become.
There are three proposals out there.
First, an arts and design academy to be run by Little Black Pearl, an arts group that has shown no particular expertise in running charter schools. I would provide a link, but for whatever reason, all attempts to get to littleblackpearl.org a 403 forbidden message. Second, an athletics-based school backed by Dyett principal Charles Campbell. The Sun-Times also links a Mark Coleman to the proposal as a guy who runs a nonprofit, but I can't find anything about him. I can, however, find a Mark Coleman who runs a media company that specializes in lining up financing for big projects-- that Mark Coleman lists Barack Obama and Ari Emmanuel as his "influencers," but that could be some other Mark Coleman. The athletics school proposal came in after the CPS deadline for proposals.
The third proposal, the Dyett Global Leadership and Green Technology High School, came from the community itself, early and complete with a partnership with DuSable University, Chicago Botanical Gardens and others. You can read the whole proposal here.
(Nobody, it should be noted, is proposing a group of robust charters so that the people of Bronzeville can have many excellent local choices.)
Um, Wait a Minute
In a poor, black neighborhood of Chicago, there's an outside proposal for entertainment industry, an outside proposal for sports, and a community proposal for science, technology and leadership. I respect athletics, and you know I love the arts, but you tell me which one of these proposals sets the highest aspirations for the children of this community.
Bronzeville is poor, but they have worked hard for their school (back in 2011, just before the district dropped the hammer, they won a grant from ESPN to rebuild their athletic facilities with big fancy upgrades like working handles for doors). They were improving and growing stronger. There's no question they needed some help, but a search doesn't turn up stories suggesting that Dyett was some sort of notorious hellhole in freefall.
So, What's Really Going On
Well, Dyett is located in the northern end of Washington Park, a very desirable chunk of real estate that is one of the two locations in the running to be the location of Barack Obama's Presidential Library. In fact, the proposed location is within a stone's throw of Dyett.
In fact, Washington Park seems to have been in the crosshairs for many years. Back in 2008, when Chicago was feeling the Olympic love, Washington Park was called one of the hottest neighborhoods, a diamond in the rough, and there is still talk about turning it into a community that could attract and support business, arts, and all the trappings of gentrification. And gentrification is a concern in Bronzeville, just as many see it as a hallmark of Rahm Emanuel's tenure as mayor.
But What Is Actually Happening?
CPS is stalling. There were going to be meetings and hearings to settle this decision. They were going to happen this summer, but finally were pushed back all the way out of August into September because-- well, I can't even say "because reason." Just because. The hunger strikers would like the school district to do the right thing, and it's pretty clear that doing nothing while waiting for the community to stop paying attention just isn't going to work.
Why Don't I Know About Any of This
If you google "Dyett hunger strike Chicago Tribune," the only thing you'll see about Chicago's major media outlet is comments about how it's not covering this at all.
Rather than rail about corrupt and incompetent media, I want to just make an observation here. Because you know what would get the Dyett parents in the media? If they blew something up or set something on fire or took some sort of violent, disruptive action that resulted in a few vanloads of police showing up.
That would be followed by a bunch of handwringing and concern trolling and tone policing and people saying, "Well, I understand they're upset, but if black folks want to be taken seriously and earn a hearing for their concerns, they need to be more reasonable and proper in their tone. They need to work within the system. They need to not be so disruptive and take such a confrontational tone. They're just hurting their own cause. I might have been sympathetic if they hadn't resorted to such unseemly behavior."
The parents of Dyett have done it all by the book. They developed their own proposals and presented them. They have petitioned and remonstrated. They have been ignored.
And this is what is most striking to me-- rather than take action against property or other people, the parents of Dyett are taking action against themselves. They are committing a slow-motion act of violence against themselves.
They have approached this exactly as people who complain about protests and civil disobedience and civil disruption say they want, and what do the parents of Dyett get for their carefully calibrated and heart-wrenching action? What they get is an indifferent media and a public that doesn't pay attention because someone who's slowly starving just isn't very exciting.
So everybody who complained about things like the acting out in Fergusson and the other protests that have popped up in the news over the last year, everybody who said, "You know, I think they have a real point and these issues of racial inequity really bother me, but I can't support such destructive misbehavior"-- here's your chance to put up or shut up. You can support the parents of Dyett in their quiet measured stand against the silencing of community members, the suspension of democracy, the trampling of people in a community just because they're black and they're poor and they don't have rich and powerful friends to help them in city hall, or you can admit you just don't give a rat's rear about any of that, and you can admit that non-wealthy non-white folks in this country have little choice except to be loud and rude and disruptive in this country. In either case, I don't want to hear concern trolling and tone policing out of you ever again.
Dyett Is Bigger Than Chicago
Dyett is everything that reformsters say they want-- an engaged and energized community that has shown a willingness to do the bootstrappy work needed to turn their own school, guided by their vision of they want for their children. Their vision is big and global and challenging and loaded with high standards, as well as a vision of using the school to anchor a rising and advancing of their entire community. If reformsters aren't going to speak up for the community and public school in this situation, they never will.
The Dyett hunger strike isn't just about the future of Bronzeville and the fate of the last of the open-enrollment public schools in the area. It's about reformsters being caught in their lies, about being given what they said they wanted and finding an excuse to turn it down so that they can do what they actually wanted all along-- profiteering and a charter system that strips democracy from Those People while busting up their neighborhood. Without a national change in course, sooner or later, all of us will be in Dyett's shoes.
For More Information
This site will lead you to most of the important up-to-date resources. Teachers for Social Justice also has an eye on things. Anthony Cody's Living in Dialogue has been paying attention. And the following clip presents more insight from Jitu Brown and Pauline Lippman-- it's a good quick summary to send to your friends who aren't so into the whole reading thing.
Send support. Spread the word.
Saturday, August 22, 2015
CAP--*^Y(FLJVKICukvkctjy!!
It was just last week that I warned that I was running out of headline variations on "CAP tries to promote a stupid Common Core idea that nobody has seriously tried to sell for years." But the Center for American Progress just keeps driving that baloney truck around the block again and again.
And last Thursday, there they were again. This time it was Lisette Partelow (director of teacher policy) in the pages of US New in their feature called Knowledge Bank.
Common Core doomsayers often claim that rich, engaging, curiosity-inspiring lessons are a thing of the past. But, as a former teacher, I'm tired of Common Core critics claiming that the standards somehow inhibit teacher creativity. It's simply not true.
First of all, as you have already guessed, Partelow's "former teacher" status is based on her two years of Teach for America experience (2012-2014). She actually did the TFA thing well after graduating college. She got her BA in Psychology from Connecticut College in 2003, and went straight to work for American Institutes for Research, the test manufacturers who sometimes go toe-to-toe with Pearson. She spent six or seven years working as a Congressional staffer and research assistant, then TFAed her way into a DC first grade temp position before landing a policy gig with CAP. In short, she's not really a former teacher.
But back to her defense of the Core.
Although the Core is swell, its detractors are "winning the public relations battle that they themselves manufactured," because as we know, all objections to Common Core are simply PR ploys and not an expression of real objections by real humans who know what they're talking about. She'll pair that old chestnut up with "people like high standards and great schools, so ipso factoid they MUST love the Common Core, just not by name."
Contrary to popular perception, Common Core was designed to be less prescriptive than many states' previous standards.
So, popular perception is just deluded. When, for instance, the Core says that the way to write a narrative is this:
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.11-12.3.a
Engage and orient the reader by setting out a problem, situation, or observation and its significance, establishing one or multiple point(s) of view, and introducing a narrator and/or characters; create a smooth progression of experiences or events.
That's not prescriptive? David Coleman's insistence that literature must be understood only by using what appears within the four corners of the text-- that's not prescriptive? And the Core's inherent emptiness, which Partelow presents as a strength (the Core doesn't tell you what texts to include)-- that insistence on structuring around a set of prescribed skills, which in turn implies that texts and literature have no value, but exist simply as a bucket in which to carry the important part, the required skills-- that's not prescriptive in any way?
Like the rules or regulations that provide direction to other professions, rigorous standards provide a loose guide for teachers to follow, while still allowing teachers ample room for creativity in how they develop and execute their daily lessons.
You can read your script wearing a tie or wearing a skirt. You can cover the Core-aligned lessons with your hair parted in the right or on the left. The classroom teacher is free to make any number of choices-- just not any of the major ones.
Partelow trots out some other old standards of the genre, including a teacher (one who won the Fishman Prize from TNTP, TFA's sister organization) who says that "she believes Common Core allows for creativity in the classroom while ensuring that students are supported by better, more rigorous standards that encourage deeper levels of understanding." Which is a pretty thing to say, although I have yet to hear an explanation of how, exactly, standards encourage deep thinking-- especially Core standards which have nothing to say about deep thinking, but focus on compliance.
But Partelow goes on to follow pattern of all those essays we read a year or two ago and offers some concrete examples of great teaching ideas and lessons that any teacher worthy of the name already knew to do before the Core was even a distant twinkle in Bill Gates' eye.
Partelow does not even recognize that CCSS has lead to straightjacketed lockstep creativity-free teaching throughout the country, not even in order to blame it one somebody else. Meanwhile, CCSS and its testing program drive schools to get "aligned" materials and follow them blindly. Of course, most reformsters didn't start that game until mid-2014. CAP is stuck in 2013.
Meanwhile, I am wondering what's going on at CAP. This is the fourth article this month in which they recycle stale Common Core talking points from late 2013. Are they in fact recycling, trying to create more environmentally responsible thinky tank effluvium? Are they executing an elaborate piece of performance art and presenting themselves as living nostalgia for the recent past? Did they hire a completely new staff that is now redoing the old crew's work? Did CAP have a stroke?
Whatever the case, they need to stop. How can we take anyone seriously who pretends that a couple of year's worth of discussion and debate and debunking never happened. At the very least, CAP needs to move on to points that we don't already know simply aren't true.
And last Thursday, there they were again. This time it was Lisette Partelow (director of teacher policy) in the pages of US New in their feature called Knowledge Bank.
Common Core doomsayers often claim that rich, engaging, curiosity-inspiring lessons are a thing of the past. But, as a former teacher, I'm tired of Common Core critics claiming that the standards somehow inhibit teacher creativity. It's simply not true.
First of all, as you have already guessed, Partelow's "former teacher" status is based on her two years of Teach for America experience (2012-2014). She actually did the TFA thing well after graduating college. She got her BA in Psychology from Connecticut College in 2003, and went straight to work for American Institutes for Research, the test manufacturers who sometimes go toe-to-toe with Pearson. She spent six or seven years working as a Congressional staffer and research assistant, then TFAed her way into a DC first grade temp position before landing a policy gig with CAP. In short, she's not really a former teacher.
But back to her defense of the Core.
Although the Core is swell, its detractors are "winning the public relations battle that they themselves manufactured," because as we know, all objections to Common Core are simply PR ploys and not an expression of real objections by real humans who know what they're talking about. She'll pair that old chestnut up with "people like high standards and great schools, so ipso factoid they MUST love the Common Core, just not by name."
Contrary to popular perception, Common Core was designed to be less prescriptive than many states' previous standards.
So, popular perception is just deluded. When, for instance, the Core says that the way to write a narrative is this:
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.11-12.3.a
Engage and orient the reader by setting out a problem, situation, or observation and its significance, establishing one or multiple point(s) of view, and introducing a narrator and/or characters; create a smooth progression of experiences or events.
That's not prescriptive? David Coleman's insistence that literature must be understood only by using what appears within the four corners of the text-- that's not prescriptive? And the Core's inherent emptiness, which Partelow presents as a strength (the Core doesn't tell you what texts to include)-- that insistence on structuring around a set of prescribed skills, which in turn implies that texts and literature have no value, but exist simply as a bucket in which to carry the important part, the required skills-- that's not prescriptive in any way?
Like the rules or regulations that provide direction to other professions, rigorous standards provide a loose guide for teachers to follow, while still allowing teachers ample room for creativity in how they develop and execute their daily lessons.
You can read your script wearing a tie or wearing a skirt. You can cover the Core-aligned lessons with your hair parted in the right or on the left. The classroom teacher is free to make any number of choices-- just not any of the major ones.
Partelow trots out some other old standards of the genre, including a teacher (one who won the Fishman Prize from TNTP, TFA's sister organization) who says that "she believes Common Core allows for creativity in the classroom while ensuring that students are supported by better, more rigorous standards that encourage deeper levels of understanding." Which is a pretty thing to say, although I have yet to hear an explanation of how, exactly, standards encourage deep thinking-- especially Core standards which have nothing to say about deep thinking, but focus on compliance.
But Partelow goes on to follow pattern of all those essays we read a year or two ago and offers some concrete examples of great teaching ideas and lessons that any teacher worthy of the name already knew to do before the Core was even a distant twinkle in Bill Gates' eye.
Partelow does not even recognize that CCSS has lead to straightjacketed lockstep creativity-free teaching throughout the country, not even in order to blame it one somebody else. Meanwhile, CCSS and its testing program drive schools to get "aligned" materials and follow them blindly. Of course, most reformsters didn't start that game until mid-2014. CAP is stuck in 2013.
Meanwhile, I am wondering what's going on at CAP. This is the fourth article this month in which they recycle stale Common Core talking points from late 2013. Are they in fact recycling, trying to create more environmentally responsible thinky tank effluvium? Are they executing an elaborate piece of performance art and presenting themselves as living nostalgia for the recent past? Did they hire a completely new staff that is now redoing the old crew's work? Did CAP have a stroke?
Whatever the case, they need to stop. How can we take anyone seriously who pretends that a couple of year's worth of discussion and debate and debunking never happened. At the very least, CAP needs to move on to points that we don't already know simply aren't true.
Friday, August 21, 2015
Are You Ready?
It is one of my least favorite questions, particularly when asked in that tone of voice that says, "I'll bet you just hate the idea of stepping back into a classroom. Please tell me how much you hate your job."
I can't think of any other profession that so relentlessly gets the "Don't you just hate to go to work" question. Do people ask doctors, "Boy, all those sick people in your office. What a pain? Amiright?" Do people tell sports stars, "Boy, I bet you're disappointed you made the playoffs and have to keep working."
We're supposed to respond with some version of weary sadness, bonding with the interogator over the shared understanding that, yes, I am sad about having to do my job and he can walk away shaking his head knowingly-- those poor damn teachers, stuck in their stinky jobs.
I can remember as a young teacher feeling kind of sheepish about trying to answer the question, sensing that my answer was not the expected one and yet not seeing a clear way to answer without it being a slap in the face to the person who asked. As regular readers may have noticed, I'm not quite as reluctant to be an ass as I once was. I mean, I understand that people mean well, sort of, and that they are just adopting a socially acceptable avenue of small talk to make conversation, and perhaps that's part of what bugs me about it-- the embedded cultural assumption that of course teachers find their job troublesome and not-look-forwardable-to. Nowadays, mostly, I settle on answering the question as if it were delivered without any subtext-- "Why, yes, I'm looking forward to it," or "Yup, it never gets old. I'm excited to get to it," or "Been getting ready all summer," or "I was born ready." Occasionally, either for people I know can stand it (or people I know can't), "Well, I haven't finished updating the early American lit reading list, and wanted to read through a few more works before heading back, and I was hoping to tweak the materials on verbal phrases because my students always have trouble with nominative absolutes." Only rarely, "Well, of course I'm ready. It's the job I've devoted my entire adult life to, the job I always wanted to do, the job I try really hard to get better at with every passing year. Why wouldn't I be ready?" The word "dumbass" is only implied.
I do know one group that gets a similar subliminal downgrade; all the mothers who are currently being asked how happy they are to get their children out of their houses and back to school. So perhaps the cultural message here is that dealing with children is unpleasant.
Of course, children themselves get their own version of the Are You Ready onslaught. We often puzzle at how small children are so excited about school and older ones are not. I'd suggest that part of the problem is that we keep telling children they shouldn't be excited about school. Not directly, of course, but right now all over the country students are being asked just how sad they are about the end of summer and the start of school.
Just imagine the effect if every single adult that a child encountered in August said some version, "Boy, I bet you're excited to get back to school! Won't it be great? What do you think is going to be the best part? Man, I wish I were your age again and going to school!"
Instead, students keep getting nudges, knowing frowns, and versions of, "Sucks, huh?"
Look, I get that the freedom of vacation is nice and recharging the batteries is useful and both are hard to give up. But this negative talk about school is pervasive and, because it's more subtle than the "Teachers are destroying education" rhetoric, easier to miss and harder to resist. And yes, there's some stress because there always unknowns-- but the stress is because we want to do well, because we care about the job.
But if we teachers are serious about improving the atmosphere around our work and our schools, it is an easy-- but important-- first step to stop participating in the "Oh, going back to school sucks and should make us sad" party. If you love your job and you're proud of the work and you are happy to get back to your classroom, don't be peer pressure pretending otherwise. Smile. Hold your chin up. Say, "It's great, important work and I'm happy to be employed doing it." Don't apologize, even through silence, for being a teacher. Resolve to make this simple stand for the profession. You know the questions and the comments.
Be ready.
I can't think of any other profession that so relentlessly gets the "Don't you just hate to go to work" question. Do people ask doctors, "Boy, all those sick people in your office. What a pain? Amiright?" Do people tell sports stars, "Boy, I bet you're disappointed you made the playoffs and have to keep working."
We're supposed to respond with some version of weary sadness, bonding with the interogator over the shared understanding that, yes, I am sad about having to do my job and he can walk away shaking his head knowingly-- those poor damn teachers, stuck in their stinky jobs.
I can remember as a young teacher feeling kind of sheepish about trying to answer the question, sensing that my answer was not the expected one and yet not seeing a clear way to answer without it being a slap in the face to the person who asked. As regular readers may have noticed, I'm not quite as reluctant to be an ass as I once was. I mean, I understand that people mean well, sort of, and that they are just adopting a socially acceptable avenue of small talk to make conversation, and perhaps that's part of what bugs me about it-- the embedded cultural assumption that of course teachers find their job troublesome and not-look-forwardable-to. Nowadays, mostly, I settle on answering the question as if it were delivered without any subtext-- "Why, yes, I'm looking forward to it," or "Yup, it never gets old. I'm excited to get to it," or "Been getting ready all summer," or "I was born ready." Occasionally, either for people I know can stand it (or people I know can't), "Well, I haven't finished updating the early American lit reading list, and wanted to read through a few more works before heading back, and I was hoping to tweak the materials on verbal phrases because my students always have trouble with nominative absolutes." Only rarely, "Well, of course I'm ready. It's the job I've devoted my entire adult life to, the job I always wanted to do, the job I try really hard to get better at with every passing year. Why wouldn't I be ready?" The word "dumbass" is only implied.
I do know one group that gets a similar subliminal downgrade; all the mothers who are currently being asked how happy they are to get their children out of their houses and back to school. So perhaps the cultural message here is that dealing with children is unpleasant.
Of course, children themselves get their own version of the Are You Ready onslaught. We often puzzle at how small children are so excited about school and older ones are not. I'd suggest that part of the problem is that we keep telling children they shouldn't be excited about school. Not directly, of course, but right now all over the country students are being asked just how sad they are about the end of summer and the start of school.
Just imagine the effect if every single adult that a child encountered in August said some version, "Boy, I bet you're excited to get back to school! Won't it be great? What do you think is going to be the best part? Man, I wish I were your age again and going to school!"
Instead, students keep getting nudges, knowing frowns, and versions of, "Sucks, huh?"
Look, I get that the freedom of vacation is nice and recharging the batteries is useful and both are hard to give up. But this negative talk about school is pervasive and, because it's more subtle than the "Teachers are destroying education" rhetoric, easier to miss and harder to resist. And yes, there's some stress because there always unknowns-- but the stress is because we want to do well, because we care about the job.
But if we teachers are serious about improving the atmosphere around our work and our schools, it is an easy-- but important-- first step to stop participating in the "Oh, going back to school sucks and should make us sad" party. If you love your job and you're proud of the work and you are happy to get back to your classroom, don't be peer pressure pretending otherwise. Smile. Hold your chin up. Say, "It's great, important work and I'm happy to be employed doing it." Don't apologize, even through silence, for being a teacher. Resolve to make this simple stand for the profession. You know the questions and the comments.
Be ready.
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Hillary's Teacher PAC, Part II
You may recall that back at the beginning of the summer, a group calling themselves America's Teachers cropped up as a PAC supporting Hillary Clinton. I did a little websurfing to see what I could find and wrote about the results.
The brain behind the PAC is a young man named Naveed Amalfard, who is the PAC's national chairman, a 2014 graduate of Emory University, and a Teach for America guy about to start his second year as a math teacher in DC. My piece about America's Teachers did not makes his day, and the drubbing some folks tried to give him on twitter made his day even less, and so he reached out to me, and this afternoon, we both took a break from beginning-of-year preparations to have a phone chat.
And so I'm prepared to answer the question-- is America's Teachers more nefarious dark money political shenanigans, or something else?
Amalfard seems like a pleasant guy, and I opened by giving him the chance to respond to the piece I wrote. He said that they (he used the word "we" throughout) were surprised to see an attack on their organization, and were particularly unhappy to find themselves linked to DFER and CAP and other Naught Persons and generally marked as negative for reasons they don't feel are merited. This prompted them to want to start a dialogue, and I readily admit that their impulse seems healthier than, say, an impulse to simply assassinate my character in their own space.
Amalfard has fine-tuned his message and mission. From the five points originally listed, AT now stands heavily for universal pre-school, college affordability, and post-secondary schooling for Dreamers. Amalfard circled back around to these three points many times. This is what they want.
I allowed as how since their original appearance, I had had trouble deciding whether they were a skullduggerous front for More Big Money or just one guy with a dream. Amalfard allowed as how they were two guys with a dream-- America's Teacher has a co-founder named Luke Villalobos. And they were animated by a dream for their students. And Amalfard told a story about watching a student get into a great college and then watching that college not provide the financial assistance to make it possible for her to attend.
On AT's blog, Amalfard comes across with the innocent arrogance of youth, the kind that announces that after one whole year of teaching, he Understands It All and will now illuminate the rest of us. On the phone, he was much less so-- not terribly slick and fairly unassuming. He's a good AFT affiliate union member who, he says, was asked to be a building rep but turned it down because he has his hands full with his job. He has enormous respect for his experienced peers and gets advice from them. I know this sounds sarcastic when I type it, but he sounded as if he meant it. Also-- and I mean this in the very best way-- he was often kind of stumbly and inarticulate in the course of our conversation, in the kind of way that suggests he's not some kind of slicker with a smooth line and a greased-up bullshit delivery system.
After the sixty gazillionth time he hammered on the Big Three Concerns of the PAC, I asked if this meant they had shifted support from Hillary to the Big Three Concerns, and the answer is that they most of all love the Big Three, but they believe that Hillary is the only candidate who can get elected and make them happen. "We think she is a champion for education," he said, and I was trying not to be an absolute ass, so I just pointed out some of the reasons that many people did not agree with him. Still. My union endorsed her, he said. Yes, and many of your union members aren't very happy about it, I said.
I asked the money question. Where does your funding come from. He said that they are going to take (those were his words-- "going to take") money from anybody anywhere on the political spectrum who would support the Big Three Concerns, and they "are not budging from them."
I asked what about Bernie Sanders. He said, "I like him. He's a great guy. A fighter. But when we look at who can get the job done..." and we were back to Hillary. Sanders is a serious opponent, not to be taken lightly, but when it comes to experience and credibility and being ready to be President, Amalfard loves Clinton very much.
Then, knowing I was talking to a Teach for America guy, I was a little bit of an asshat. "Where do you see yourself in ten years," I asked. Amalfard hemmed a bit and said that it would be really presumptuous of him to try to predict that.
"Well," I asked. "Do you see yourself in a classroom?"
"I surely am considering it," he said. When he thinks about the students and what they need, he knows it would be hard to leave. And as the product of an immigrant family, he really feels the issues of educational inequality. That, he thinks, is the most important advocacy work.
I noted at points in our conversation that declaring yourself the representative for the nation's teachers based on the insights you've gained in your one year in Teach for America might raise some people's eyebrows, particularly when you do it in support of a candidate who is not universally seen as public education friendly, might just get you some pushback. He did not try to 'splain why I was wrong, but just said, "I hear you."
Does this twenty-three-year-old have any kind of track record? Well, while at Emory he launched Readers Beyond Borders, an initiative that raised some money (Amalfard made some phone calls back to his hometown in Georgia and raised $19K in three weeks) which put six Kenyan students through college. One is now a post-grad fellow and heard President Obama speak on his African tour.
Is America's Teachers actually making a dent? Well, their twitter account has over 4,400 followers (better than certain C-list bloggers) despite having done fewer than 200 tweets. On the other hand, nobody seems to be talking about them on twitter. They apparently not on facebook, and they don't rise very far on a google search. A few weeks ago they issued a press release about Christie's ridiculous interest in punching the teachers' union, and it doesn't appear to have been picked up by anybody at all.
So if I had to make a judgment (and I don't, but as always, I will anyway), I'd say that America's Teachers PAC is more about youthful naive exuberance, one more monument to how anyone with a little ambition and an internet connection can try to grab a turn on the Big Stage, whether they have a complex and nuanced understanding of what's happening on that stage or not. Perhaps these guys will actually create a giant ship of money collected from all sorts of political enemies that will be used to float President H. Clinton into the universal preschool port. Or maybe he's a deeply gifted actor who managed to pull over my eyes and is yucking it up right now with champagne-swilling Masters of the Universe. But I don't think so. For right now, I'm going to call America's Teacher a couple of relatively harmless youngsters with an improbable under-researched dream.
The brain behind the PAC is a young man named Naveed Amalfard, who is the PAC's national chairman, a 2014 graduate of Emory University, and a Teach for America guy about to start his second year as a math teacher in DC. My piece about America's Teachers did not makes his day, and the drubbing some folks tried to give him on twitter made his day even less, and so he reached out to me, and this afternoon, we both took a break from beginning-of-year preparations to have a phone chat.
And so I'm prepared to answer the question-- is America's Teachers more nefarious dark money political shenanigans, or something else?
Amalfard seems like a pleasant guy, and I opened by giving him the chance to respond to the piece I wrote. He said that they (he used the word "we" throughout) were surprised to see an attack on their organization, and were particularly unhappy to find themselves linked to DFER and CAP and other Naught Persons and generally marked as negative for reasons they don't feel are merited. This prompted them to want to start a dialogue, and I readily admit that their impulse seems healthier than, say, an impulse to simply assassinate my character in their own space.
Amalfard has fine-tuned his message and mission. From the five points originally listed, AT now stands heavily for universal pre-school, college affordability, and post-secondary schooling for Dreamers. Amalfard circled back around to these three points many times. This is what they want.
I allowed as how since their original appearance, I had had trouble deciding whether they were a skullduggerous front for More Big Money or just one guy with a dream. Amalfard allowed as how they were two guys with a dream-- America's Teacher has a co-founder named Luke Villalobos. And they were animated by a dream for their students. And Amalfard told a story about watching a student get into a great college and then watching that college not provide the financial assistance to make it possible for her to attend.
On AT's blog, Amalfard comes across with the innocent arrogance of youth, the kind that announces that after one whole year of teaching, he Understands It All and will now illuminate the rest of us. On the phone, he was much less so-- not terribly slick and fairly unassuming. He's a good AFT affiliate union member who, he says, was asked to be a building rep but turned it down because he has his hands full with his job. He has enormous respect for his experienced peers and gets advice from them. I know this sounds sarcastic when I type it, but he sounded as if he meant it. Also-- and I mean this in the very best way-- he was often kind of stumbly and inarticulate in the course of our conversation, in the kind of way that suggests he's not some kind of slicker with a smooth line and a greased-up bullshit delivery system.
After the sixty gazillionth time he hammered on the Big Three Concerns of the PAC, I asked if this meant they had shifted support from Hillary to the Big Three Concerns, and the answer is that they most of all love the Big Three, but they believe that Hillary is the only candidate who can get elected and make them happen. "We think she is a champion for education," he said, and I was trying not to be an absolute ass, so I just pointed out some of the reasons that many people did not agree with him. Still. My union endorsed her, he said. Yes, and many of your union members aren't very happy about it, I said.
I asked the money question. Where does your funding come from. He said that they are going to take (those were his words-- "going to take") money from anybody anywhere on the political spectrum who would support the Big Three Concerns, and they "are not budging from them."
I asked what about Bernie Sanders. He said, "I like him. He's a great guy. A fighter. But when we look at who can get the job done..." and we were back to Hillary. Sanders is a serious opponent, not to be taken lightly, but when it comes to experience and credibility and being ready to be President, Amalfard loves Clinton very much.
Then, knowing I was talking to a Teach for America guy, I was a little bit of an asshat. "Where do you see yourself in ten years," I asked. Amalfard hemmed a bit and said that it would be really presumptuous of him to try to predict that.
"Well," I asked. "Do you see yourself in a classroom?"
"I surely am considering it," he said. When he thinks about the students and what they need, he knows it would be hard to leave. And as the product of an immigrant family, he really feels the issues of educational inequality. That, he thinks, is the most important advocacy work.
I noted at points in our conversation that declaring yourself the representative for the nation's teachers based on the insights you've gained in your one year in Teach for America might raise some people's eyebrows, particularly when you do it in support of a candidate who is not universally seen as public education friendly, might just get you some pushback. He did not try to 'splain why I was wrong, but just said, "I hear you."
Does this twenty-three-year-old have any kind of track record? Well, while at Emory he launched Readers Beyond Borders, an initiative that raised some money (Amalfard made some phone calls back to his hometown in Georgia and raised $19K in three weeks) which put six Kenyan students through college. One is now a post-grad fellow and heard President Obama speak on his African tour.
Is America's Teachers actually making a dent? Well, their twitter account has over 4,400 followers (better than certain C-list bloggers) despite having done fewer than 200 tweets. On the other hand, nobody seems to be talking about them on twitter. They apparently not on facebook, and they don't rise very far on a google search. A few weeks ago they issued a press release about Christie's ridiculous interest in punching the teachers' union, and it doesn't appear to have been picked up by anybody at all.
So if I had to make a judgment (and I don't, but as always, I will anyway), I'd say that America's Teachers PAC is more about youthful naive exuberance, one more monument to how anyone with a little ambition and an internet connection can try to grab a turn on the Big Stage, whether they have a complex and nuanced understanding of what's happening on that stage or not. Perhaps these guys will actually create a giant ship of money collected from all sorts of political enemies that will be used to float President H. Clinton into the universal preschool port. Or maybe he's a deeply gifted actor who managed to pull over my eyes and is yucking it up right now with champagne-swilling Masters of the Universe. But I don't think so. For right now, I'm going to call America's Teacher a couple of relatively harmless youngsters with an improbable under-researched dream.
The GOP's Education Problem
Damn you, internet.
I had no intention of watching Campbell Brown's Edfest stream yesterday, but as it turns out, I mostly did. I missed a big chunk of Bobby Jindal and Scott Walker, so I did not follow up my AM post with a PM one. But the day did crystallize for me some of the huge gaping problems with the narrative that Presidential hopefuls are trying to craft. I'm pretty sure it tells us something when one of the most coherent narratives came from Chris Christie and that it was also the one most completely divorced from reality.
The narrative's basic is Wanting To Have It Both Ways, and that principle is applied in several places.
Teachers
The theory here is that teachers are awesome and wonderful and the most important people in education. The teachers union, however, is the single biggest obstacle to public education in this country. Great teachers should be paid a ton, and we'll be able to afford that because we will fire all of the terrible teachers in schools, because that's an easy call to make, and great teachers can teach as many students as you like? Also lots of teachers are terrible lazy slackers, and that's what the union is for. But teachers are great. Except for the many, many, many, many terrible ones.
Teachers unions are somehow completely disconnected from their members and the interests and concerns of teachers, according to this story (perhaps teachers unions are run by space aliens), and the irony here is that there is some real disconnect but Exhibit A is the degree to which union leaders have supported reformster programs.
But mostly unions are bad because they make us follow all these rules and pay teachers money and keep teacher job securities in place, and our great teachers don't want any of those obstacles to doing their jobs. We teachers apparently love it when we can be paid whatever and lose our jobs at any time for any reasons. Love it.
Local Control & Choice
GOP pols have the message-- local control is great and the American Way and they totally support it except when they have to take it away from places that suck. Parents should be free to choose from an assortment of great schools, or at least from the assortment of charter schools that we say they should have. And parents who want to exert local control by keeping their community school intact (like, say, the hunger strikers of Chicago or the protesters of Newark)-- well, they can't have it. Jindal gave an impassioned explanation of how parent preference and local control are vital and important; then he gave an impassioned explanation of how even though all the parents and students and teachers and community leaders of New Orleans resisted having their system trashed and privatized, he did it anyway because he knew better than they did.
Parents should have choices, but only the choices we think they should have. But they should have choices. But not those choices. Repeat ad infinitum.
Oh-- unless you stop for the new classic "Local control is union control." Can anybody name a school board anywhere that was bought and paid for by the teachers union? But no-- we can't have local control in some places because those damn teachers--er, that damn teachers union. Only by having the state take over can local voices be empowered.
Red Tape
I suppose it's a small thing, but it's a sign of how much they don't understand. They would like to free schools and teachers from red tape and paperwork etc etc etc-- but they would also like to have complete accountability for everything that teachers and schools do. How they imagine such extensive accountability will happen without tons of reports and data entry and paperwork and red tape I do not know. The definition of red tape is, I guess, "reports about things that I don't care about."
Standards
I imagine this is frustrating for fans of Common Core because the GOP is totally for the Common Core, as long as you don't call it Common Core. They want higher standards (whatever those are) and test-based accountability for those standards (because lazy teachers need to be pushed). We are back to the old idea that teachers could teach every child awesomely-- we just choose not to for some reason. Of course, the faith in state takeover also suggests that the states know exactly how to make schools successful, so why are they holding out on us-- but I digress.
So it's bad when the standards come from the feds, but we should totally have those kinds of standards. But not a curriculum. Just standards that insure everyone in the country is teaching the Right Thing. But not Common Core.
And the GOP has taken to expressing a broader, deeper idea about what education should be about, including arts and vocational ed and other Good Things-- without any awareness at all that the current college and career ready standards accountability test and punish system is set up exactly counter to all those high aspirations.
Nostalgia & Status Quo
To be fair, this is not exclusively a GOP problem. A lot of pols are out there making strong arguments against continuing to run classrooms the same way we did in 1963. When they talk about things that need to change, like rote learning and teacher lecture, I don't recognize the world they describe. I suppose it's natural to base your picture of school on what you remember from being a student--oh, wait. It's natural to do that if you have no experience with or knowledge of what goes on in schools today. Some folks are more prone to this problem than others (Jeb Bush yesterday admonished reporters to put away their blackberries).
But if you're going to rail against the status quo, you ought to know what it is. The GOP hopefuls keep blasting the status quo, as if the status quo weren't test driven, common core infected, reformster created mess.
Race and Poverty
Crickets. Only a side reference when we talk about all the things that good teachers with high standards and big expectations can overcome. But so far the GOP seems to believe that dealing with issues of race is on par with dealing with Montana's Yeti infestation problem.
Urgency
When it comes to public schools, we can't leave a student in a bad one for even a single more day. When it comes to charters, we need to be patient while the charter choice system finds its footing.
Cognitive Dissonance
Yesterday confirmed what I have suspected, which is that if a GOP candidate talks about education for more than sixty seconds, the raft of self-contradictions come floating in. Standardization is bad, but students should all do the same thing. Local control is great, except when it should be eliminated. Teachers are great. Teachers suck. No federal overreach, but complete accountability for tax dollars.
This is going to be a long primary season. Let's hope the Democrats can do better.
I had no intention of watching Campbell Brown's Edfest stream yesterday, but as it turns out, I mostly did. I missed a big chunk of Bobby Jindal and Scott Walker, so I did not follow up my AM post with a PM one. But the day did crystallize for me some of the huge gaping problems with the narrative that Presidential hopefuls are trying to craft. I'm pretty sure it tells us something when one of the most coherent narratives came from Chris Christie and that it was also the one most completely divorced from reality.
The narrative's basic is Wanting To Have It Both Ways, and that principle is applied in several places.
Teachers
The theory here is that teachers are awesome and wonderful and the most important people in education. The teachers union, however, is the single biggest obstacle to public education in this country. Great teachers should be paid a ton, and we'll be able to afford that because we will fire all of the terrible teachers in schools, because that's an easy call to make, and great teachers can teach as many students as you like? Also lots of teachers are terrible lazy slackers, and that's what the union is for. But teachers are great. Except for the many, many, many, many terrible ones.
Teachers unions are somehow completely disconnected from their members and the interests and concerns of teachers, according to this story (perhaps teachers unions are run by space aliens), and the irony here is that there is some real disconnect but Exhibit A is the degree to which union leaders have supported reformster programs.
But mostly unions are bad because they make us follow all these rules and pay teachers money and keep teacher job securities in place, and our great teachers don't want any of those obstacles to doing their jobs. We teachers apparently love it when we can be paid whatever and lose our jobs at any time for any reasons. Love it.
Local Control & Choice
GOP pols have the message-- local control is great and the American Way and they totally support it except when they have to take it away from places that suck. Parents should be free to choose from an assortment of great schools, or at least from the assortment of charter schools that we say they should have. And parents who want to exert local control by keeping their community school intact (like, say, the hunger strikers of Chicago or the protesters of Newark)-- well, they can't have it. Jindal gave an impassioned explanation of how parent preference and local control are vital and important; then he gave an impassioned explanation of how even though all the parents and students and teachers and community leaders of New Orleans resisted having their system trashed and privatized, he did it anyway because he knew better than they did.
Parents should have choices, but only the choices we think they should have. But they should have choices. But not those choices. Repeat ad infinitum.
Oh-- unless you stop for the new classic "Local control is union control." Can anybody name a school board anywhere that was bought and paid for by the teachers union? But no-- we can't have local control in some places because those damn teachers--er, that damn teachers union. Only by having the state take over can local voices be empowered.
Red Tape
I suppose it's a small thing, but it's a sign of how much they don't understand. They would like to free schools and teachers from red tape and paperwork etc etc etc-- but they would also like to have complete accountability for everything that teachers and schools do. How they imagine such extensive accountability will happen without tons of reports and data entry and paperwork and red tape I do not know. The definition of red tape is, I guess, "reports about things that I don't care about."
Standards
I imagine this is frustrating for fans of Common Core because the GOP is totally for the Common Core, as long as you don't call it Common Core. They want higher standards (whatever those are) and test-based accountability for those standards (because lazy teachers need to be pushed). We are back to the old idea that teachers could teach every child awesomely-- we just choose not to for some reason. Of course, the faith in state takeover also suggests that the states know exactly how to make schools successful, so why are they holding out on us-- but I digress.
So it's bad when the standards come from the feds, but we should totally have those kinds of standards. But not a curriculum. Just standards that insure everyone in the country is teaching the Right Thing. But not Common Core.
And the GOP has taken to expressing a broader, deeper idea about what education should be about, including arts and vocational ed and other Good Things-- without any awareness at all that the current college and career ready standards accountability test and punish system is set up exactly counter to all those high aspirations.
Nostalgia & Status Quo
To be fair, this is not exclusively a GOP problem. A lot of pols are out there making strong arguments against continuing to run classrooms the same way we did in 1963. When they talk about things that need to change, like rote learning and teacher lecture, I don't recognize the world they describe. I suppose it's natural to base your picture of school on what you remember from being a student--oh, wait. It's natural to do that if you have no experience with or knowledge of what goes on in schools today. Some folks are more prone to this problem than others (Jeb Bush yesterday admonished reporters to put away their blackberries).
But if you're going to rail against the status quo, you ought to know what it is. The GOP hopefuls keep blasting the status quo, as if the status quo weren't test driven, common core infected, reformster created mess.
Race and Poverty
Crickets. Only a side reference when we talk about all the things that good teachers with high standards and big expectations can overcome. But so far the GOP seems to believe that dealing with issues of race is on par with dealing with Montana's Yeti infestation problem.
Urgency
When it comes to public schools, we can't leave a student in a bad one for even a single more day. When it comes to charters, we need to be patient while the charter choice system finds its footing.
Cognitive Dissonance
Yesterday confirmed what I have suspected, which is that if a GOP candidate talks about education for more than sixty seconds, the raft of self-contradictions come floating in. Standardization is bad, but students should all do the same thing. Local control is great, except when it should be eliminated. Teachers are great. Teachers suck. No federal overreach, but complete accountability for tax dollars.
This is going to be a long primary season. Let's hope the Democrats can do better.
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Campbell Brown's Edusummit AM
Today is Campbell Brown's education summit in New Hampshire, featuring six GOP candidates and some other filler. It's an all-day extravaganza. The live streaming had some trouble hitting its stride, so I missed the opener and the first part of Jeb Bush's turn in the soft, comfy chair (there are no hot seats anywhere at this summit.)
I had no intention of watching, but it's like netflixing a bad comedy series-- you just keep sticking around a little bit longer. So I have no super-coherent observations about the morning with Bush, Fiorina, and Kasich (Jennifer Berkshire is there for Edushyster, so I look forward to her write-up). But there are several things that jump out.
"God-given"
That's the preferred modifier for the talents and abilities of students. This not only lets candidates name-check God, but it also sidesteps any discussion about what effects poverty and environment might have on the talents and abilities that a student brings to school.
Local control is union control
Yeah, this is a new but already-beloved talking point. If you let people have local control, those damn unions will just buy the elections, just like they did in...well, somewhere. The problem with this talking point will be coming up with an actual example of a local school board that is run by the bought-and-paid-for tools of the teachers union.
Cognitive dissonance
Holy smokes but the candidates disagree with themselves. Kasich thinks local control is awesome, but the state takeover of Cleveland and Youngstown is also awesome. This is a sticking point for all three candidates, who love them some local control and decry the evils of top-down federal over-reachy policy-- but you can't privatize and get charters and choice unless you open up the market by shutting down local voters.
Also teachers unions are terrible and awful and a barrier to great things in education, but teachers themselves are wonderful and deserve our support and good pay except for the bad ones who should be driven from the classroom. We're really torn here.
Expectations are important and magical, so we can get students to do better just by expecting it, but not by supporting those expectations. Just expect.
Annnd-- we all hate red tape and think that a whole bunch of mandated paperwork and programs and stuff is terrible, but we also should have rock-solid tough-love accountability so that we absolutely know if students are learning and teachers are doing a good job. Do none of these people see that the only way to get super-duper accountability is with tons of "red tape"?
Students vs grownups
We saw a resurgence of the talking point about how we should run schools according to needs of students and not the needs of adults (aka teachers aka those money-grubbing union teachers who want pay and stuff). This allows us to dismiss all teacher objections to vouchers, testing , charters, etc because there couldn't be anything in our criticism of policy based on our professional knowledge-- it's just us looking out for our own interests. I find this one particularly ironic because:
A) in many places, teachers are the primary voices standing up for student interests and
B) charters and choice schools are naturally not interested in student needs, because if I'm a charter operator, every dollar I spend on a student is a dollar I don't get to keep.
Fiorina is not ready for prime time
Fiorina channeled Yong Zhao briefly to explain why China-style standardization is a terrible idea, even though much of what she supports fits that completely. She doesn't known that the government and the USED are audited, she doesn't understand the Vergara case, she doesn't know what TFA actually does, and she thinks we're testing students every year in all subjects.
She also dropped the most quotable gaffe of the day, saying that Katrina was "a wonderful oportunity for innovation."
Jeb is anti-tepid
Jeb spoke about his fiery concern and against being tepid. He wants to "let the big dog eat" which seems to mean that corporations should be able to eat piles of money of the backs of children and poop out... I dunno. Education? It was an odd moment. He said "rising" a lot.
Kasich talks to and for God
Kasich was Kasich, barely allowing Brown to speak and instructing us several times on what God wants. He wants teachers not to hang out in lounges, and he channeled Reagan-- Nancy Reagan-- by saying that we stop the drug problem by just telling people to stop.
Just send money
Everyone wants the feds to just bundle up the money and send it to the states to use as they think best.
As I left
A congressperson, an AEI guy, and a writer from the Wall Street Journal were doing a promotional discussion for school choice. It would have been boring, except that the Wall Street Journal writer seems really, really angry, like she wants to punch public education in the face.
You can find the after noon stuff, which kicks off with a panel discussion on the excitement of new innovation which would be uninspiring except that the panel includes Joel "I Just Tanked Amplify" Klein. I'd like to hope that he'll be asked the secret of turning $1 billion into $600 million, but I doubt it. Nobody has gotten a hard question yet today except, oddly enough, "Can you name who influences your thoughts on education policy" which was probably not meant to be a stumper, but is. The feed is on youtube right here, and they'll probably save all of it, God help us.
I had no intention of watching, but it's like netflixing a bad comedy series-- you just keep sticking around a little bit longer. So I have no super-coherent observations about the morning with Bush, Fiorina, and Kasich (Jennifer Berkshire is there for Edushyster, so I look forward to her write-up). But there are several things that jump out.
"God-given"
That's the preferred modifier for the talents and abilities of students. This not only lets candidates name-check God, but it also sidesteps any discussion about what effects poverty and environment might have on the talents and abilities that a student brings to school.
Local control is union control
Yeah, this is a new but already-beloved talking point. If you let people have local control, those damn unions will just buy the elections, just like they did in...well, somewhere. The problem with this talking point will be coming up with an actual example of a local school board that is run by the bought-and-paid-for tools of the teachers union.
Cognitive dissonance
Holy smokes but the candidates disagree with themselves. Kasich thinks local control is awesome, but the state takeover of Cleveland and Youngstown is also awesome. This is a sticking point for all three candidates, who love them some local control and decry the evils of top-down federal over-reachy policy-- but you can't privatize and get charters and choice unless you open up the market by shutting down local voters.
Also teachers unions are terrible and awful and a barrier to great things in education, but teachers themselves are wonderful and deserve our support and good pay except for the bad ones who should be driven from the classroom. We're really torn here.
Expectations are important and magical, so we can get students to do better just by expecting it, but not by supporting those expectations. Just expect.
Annnd-- we all hate red tape and think that a whole bunch of mandated paperwork and programs and stuff is terrible, but we also should have rock-solid tough-love accountability so that we absolutely know if students are learning and teachers are doing a good job. Do none of these people see that the only way to get super-duper accountability is with tons of "red tape"?
Students vs grownups
We saw a resurgence of the talking point about how we should run schools according to needs of students and not the needs of adults (aka teachers aka those money-grubbing union teachers who want pay and stuff). This allows us to dismiss all teacher objections to vouchers, testing , charters, etc because there couldn't be anything in our criticism of policy based on our professional knowledge-- it's just us looking out for our own interests. I find this one particularly ironic because:
A) in many places, teachers are the primary voices standing up for student interests and
B) charters and choice schools are naturally not interested in student needs, because if I'm a charter operator, every dollar I spend on a student is a dollar I don't get to keep.
Fiorina is not ready for prime time
Fiorina channeled Yong Zhao briefly to explain why China-style standardization is a terrible idea, even though much of what she supports fits that completely. She doesn't known that the government and the USED are audited, she doesn't understand the Vergara case, she doesn't know what TFA actually does, and she thinks we're testing students every year in all subjects.
She also dropped the most quotable gaffe of the day, saying that Katrina was "a wonderful oportunity for innovation."
Jeb is anti-tepid
Jeb spoke about his fiery concern and against being tepid. He wants to "let the big dog eat" which seems to mean that corporations should be able to eat piles of money of the backs of children and poop out... I dunno. Education? It was an odd moment. He said "rising" a lot.
Kasich talks to and for God
Kasich was Kasich, barely allowing Brown to speak and instructing us several times on what God wants. He wants teachers not to hang out in lounges, and he channeled Reagan-- Nancy Reagan-- by saying that we stop the drug problem by just telling people to stop.
Just send money
Everyone wants the feds to just bundle up the money and send it to the states to use as they think best.
As I left
A congressperson, an AEI guy, and a writer from the Wall Street Journal were doing a promotional discussion for school choice. It would have been boring, except that the Wall Street Journal writer seems really, really angry, like she wants to punch public education in the face.
You can find the after noon stuff, which kicks off with a panel discussion on the excitement of new innovation which would be uninspiring except that the panel includes Joel "I Just Tanked Amplify" Klein. I'd like to hope that he'll be asked the secret of turning $1 billion into $600 million, but I doubt it. Nobody has gotten a hard question yet today except, oddly enough, "Can you name who influences your thoughts on education policy" which was probably not meant to be a stumper, but is. The feed is on youtube right here, and they'll probably save all of it, God help us.
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