This week was a full assortment of rehearsals for a local performance of The Messiah, and this weekend is the first time my entire family has gathered in one place for a long time, so if I've seemed a little distant and busy, dear reader, that's why. But I do have a whole stack of things for you to check out today while my family is opening presents and we're singing the Messiah matinee.
The New Preschool Is Crushing Kids
The genre of "here's how ugly and awful early childhood ed has become under the test-and-punish era of education" articles is crowded, but everybody needs to be reminded that this is happening and that it sucks. They need to be reminded repeatedly until we put an end to it. Here's one more stark and painful example.
For Profit Charter Schools Are Fading and Failing
Jessica Huseman misses a few of the finer points (particularly the ways in which non-profits mirror for-profits), but on balance this is a good analysis of why the For Profit charter industry is turning out to be (surprise) a failed experiment.
Worst and Dumbest: The Sequel
Florida's remarkably idiotic plan to give teachers a bonus for their high school SAT scores is back-- and this time it wants to be permanent. A good study in how a bill that nobody thinks is smart can still end up becoming a law.
Stand for Children Louisiana Is an Evil and Malicious Corporate Front Group for Evil People and Organizations
Crazy Crawfish tells us what he really thinks. Because while some reformsters are folks with a different perspective or different understandings of how schools can best serve students, some are just scruples-free rotters trying to get their hands on money and power.
Ethical ELA
I'm always amazed how, no matter how much I've read and explored, there are still chunks of the interwebs that I've never stumbled into. This is an entire website dedicated to discussing issues of how to ethically teach all the various aspects of language. Worth a look.
This week the Edublog Awards were unveiled and this post of mine about music won an award for being one of the most influential posts of the year. Like most of these sorts of awardy things, it's a nice selection of sites and posts with which you may not be familiar. In particular I was struck by this post:
What Being Gay Has Taught Me About White Privilege
You may or may not agree with everything that the blogger at Crawling out of the Classroom has to say, but her level of honesty and openness is impressive.
Creativity Is the Key to Happiness
If you're not familiar with the concept of "flow," this is a simple and accessible look at it and the idea that creativity is the key to a happy life.
Sunday, December 20, 2015
Saturday, December 19, 2015
Avoid the SAT
This story has been circulating pretty steadily, but if you teach juniors (or have one in your home) you need to be paying attention, because all indications are that when the new SAT rolls out in a few months, high school juniors should avoid it
The most recent sign that the College Board doesn't really know what the heck they're doing is the announcement that PSAT scores will not be out till January, a good month later than the usual unveiling. And really, we have only the College Board's assurance that they will meet the new January due date-- just as we had their assurance that scores would be out in December.
The PSAT score return is critical because it's the first chance for juniors to see how they line up with the upcoming New! Improved! SAT. Now they'll be waiting for that.
This is not the first we've heard that the New! Improved! SAT should be avoided like a bad haircut.
Way back in April, Dan Edmonds (Noodle) was in Forbes giving three reasons to avoid the revamped SAT. His reasons were
1) Lack of test prep options. Nobody has had a chance to get prepped and ready to get students prepped and ready.
2) Late results. College Board has said they won't release March test results until after the May tests. This may make sense from a "let's see what we've got here" test-norming standpoint, but still-- late is late.
3) The New! Improved! SAT is trying to look like the ACT. If you're going to take a test like the ACT, why not take the ACT?
Test prep experts have been speaking out against taking that New! Improved! SAT. Back in March, Adam Ingersoll of the Compass Group was encouraging students not to be guinea pigs for the College Board. At the same time, that advice was being echoed by Anthony Green, one of the top test prep gurus in the US, who said he's advising all of his clients to skip the new test.
"I'm recommending that none of my students take the first three rounds of the new SAT (March, May, and June of 2016)," Green said. "Why let students be guinea pigs for the College Board's marketing machine?"
Tell us what you really think, Anthony.
The "new SAT" is basically a poorly disguised marketing gimmick that's trying to:
A) Make the SAT much more like the ACT. If you look at the changes being made, you'll find that all of them are an attempt to make the test's format and material more similar to the ACT.
B) Get rid of the essay (it's now optional) and bring the grading scale back to the old, familiar 1600 that everyone knows and loves (or hates). In essence, they're admitting that the current version of the test was a mistake.
C) Attempt to make people forget that this test is an inherently unfair mechanism designed to gauge student income levels
Are test prep specialists just pissed that David Coleman's New! Improved! SAT is supposed to be test prep impervious, or maybe the test prep is being given away free by Khan Academy-- the PR is a little fuzzy on this point. Coleman has repeatedly insisted that the test now measures what high schools students really do to prepare for college-- but it's important to understand that Coleman thinks this is true because this is the same David Coleman who foisted the Common Core on US public education. He insisted that the Core would prepare students for college, and now he wants the SAT to measure what they learned under the Core.
Coleman was also hired to save the SAT, which is currently Number Two behind the ACT folks. This is the second SAT redesign in a decade (the last one gave us the SAT essay which nobody on earth thinks is an actual measure of anything).
I've looked at the marketing and the samples, and I feel comfortable saying that every failure of true educational assessment that we've seen on the Big Standardized Tests is right there in the New! Improved! SAT. This test is a crapfest-- and not just a crapfest, but an untested, unproven crapfest from a company that just rolled out the first part of its new suite of tests and now can't get the results back to students on time.
And while personalities may not be fair to factor in, and the company certainly has more hands on deck than Coleman's, David Coleman has so far in his educational leadership career (which at this point isn't even a decade old) has show far more more hubris than ability to learn, adapt, and grow. It's also worth remembering that along with no experience or knowledge of the education world, Coleman also has no experience or knowledge of the sales and marketing world. Finding powerful and connected backers won't do any good if the actual product crashes and burns and chases the customers away in droves. (Not that he hasn't tried to work around that-- watch your local state to see people fighting to make PSAT and SAT tests mandatory for all students, or part of the evaluation process).
The New! Improved! SAT has the potential to be a disaster of epic proportions, and that might be an occasion for schadenfreude if not for one thing-- a whole host of eleventh graders are counting on those scores to help them get into college. Yes, we can talk about how screwed up that whole business is, but in the meantime it's the world our students have to live in, and in that world, this spring, the ACT is their best shot.
This will be a real wrenching change for some folks. In many schools, taking the PSAT and SAT is just something you do, and students believe these issue forth from the same immutable government authorities as vaccine requirements and rules about how many courses one must complete to graduate. But as always, folks need to understand that the College Board is a company that makes a living selling a particular product, just like Ford Motor Company and Coca-Cola. That means it's caveat emptor time, and this time around, the smart emptors should avoid the SAT, and those of us who teach juniors have a responsibility to say so.
You don't have to take the SAT-- and this year at least, you shouldn't.
The most recent sign that the College Board doesn't really know what the heck they're doing is the announcement that PSAT scores will not be out till January, a good month later than the usual unveiling. And really, we have only the College Board's assurance that they will meet the new January due date-- just as we had their assurance that scores would be out in December.
The PSAT score return is critical because it's the first chance for juniors to see how they line up with the upcoming New! Improved! SAT. Now they'll be waiting for that.
This is not the first we've heard that the New! Improved! SAT should be avoided like a bad haircut.
Way back in April, Dan Edmonds (Noodle) was in Forbes giving three reasons to avoid the revamped SAT. His reasons were
1) Lack of test prep options. Nobody has had a chance to get prepped and ready to get students prepped and ready.
2) Late results. College Board has said they won't release March test results until after the May tests. This may make sense from a "let's see what we've got here" test-norming standpoint, but still-- late is late.
3) The New! Improved! SAT is trying to look like the ACT. If you're going to take a test like the ACT, why not take the ACT?
Test prep experts have been speaking out against taking that New! Improved! SAT. Back in March, Adam Ingersoll of the Compass Group was encouraging students not to be guinea pigs for the College Board. At the same time, that advice was being echoed by Anthony Green, one of the top test prep gurus in the US, who said he's advising all of his clients to skip the new test.
"I'm recommending that none of my students take the first three rounds of the new SAT (March, May, and June of 2016)," Green said. "Why let students be guinea pigs for the College Board's marketing machine?"
Tell us what you really think, Anthony.
The "new SAT" is basically a poorly disguised marketing gimmick that's trying to:
A) Make the SAT much more like the ACT. If you look at the changes being made, you'll find that all of them are an attempt to make the test's format and material more similar to the ACT.
B) Get rid of the essay (it's now optional) and bring the grading scale back to the old, familiar 1600 that everyone knows and loves (or hates). In essence, they're admitting that the current version of the test was a mistake.
C) Attempt to make people forget that this test is an inherently unfair mechanism designed to gauge student income levels
Are test prep specialists just pissed that David Coleman's New! Improved! SAT is supposed to be test prep impervious, or maybe the test prep is being given away free by Khan Academy-- the PR is a little fuzzy on this point. Coleman has repeatedly insisted that the test now measures what high schools students really do to prepare for college-- but it's important to understand that Coleman thinks this is true because this is the same David Coleman who foisted the Common Core on US public education. He insisted that the Core would prepare students for college, and now he wants the SAT to measure what they learned under the Core.
Coleman was also hired to save the SAT, which is currently Number Two behind the ACT folks. This is the second SAT redesign in a decade (the last one gave us the SAT essay which nobody on earth thinks is an actual measure of anything).
I've looked at the marketing and the samples, and I feel comfortable saying that every failure of true educational assessment that we've seen on the Big Standardized Tests is right there in the New! Improved! SAT. This test is a crapfest-- and not just a crapfest, but an untested, unproven crapfest from a company that just rolled out the first part of its new suite of tests and now can't get the results back to students on time.
And while personalities may not be fair to factor in, and the company certainly has more hands on deck than Coleman's, David Coleman has so far in his educational leadership career (which at this point isn't even a decade old) has show far more more hubris than ability to learn, adapt, and grow. It's also worth remembering that along with no experience or knowledge of the education world, Coleman also has no experience or knowledge of the sales and marketing world. Finding powerful and connected backers won't do any good if the actual product crashes and burns and chases the customers away in droves. (Not that he hasn't tried to work around that-- watch your local state to see people fighting to make PSAT and SAT tests mandatory for all students, or part of the evaluation process).
The New! Improved! SAT has the potential to be a disaster of epic proportions, and that might be an occasion for schadenfreude if not for one thing-- a whole host of eleventh graders are counting on those scores to help them get into college. Yes, we can talk about how screwed up that whole business is, but in the meantime it's the world our students have to live in, and in that world, this spring, the ACT is their best shot.
This will be a real wrenching change for some folks. In many schools, taking the PSAT and SAT is just something you do, and students believe these issue forth from the same immutable government authorities as vaccine requirements and rules about how many courses one must complete to graduate. But as always, folks need to understand that the College Board is a company that makes a living selling a particular product, just like Ford Motor Company and Coca-Cola. That means it's caveat emptor time, and this time around, the smart emptors should avoid the SAT, and those of us who teach juniors have a responsibility to say so.
You don't have to take the SAT-- and this year at least, you shouldn't.
Friday, December 18, 2015
The Federal Family Fixing Plan
It's the kind of document that only a federal bureaucracy could create, and you still have a little over two weeks to comment on it. Meet the DRAFT POLICY STATEMENT ON FAMILY ENGAGEMENT FROM THE EARLY YEARS TO THE EARLY GRADES.
It's a policy so bureaucraticky that it took two departments-- Education plus Health and Human Services-- to come up with it. Like all good government documents, it ranges from dull to obvious to dumb to terrifying. And it wants to address, in particular, pre-K. Also pre-pre-pre-K. Its stated purpose is to formulate some policies "on systematically engaging families in their children’s development, learning, and wellness, across early childhood and elementary education settings."
Announcing the Problem
I tell my students never to open a piece of writing with a Bulletin from Captain Obvious (The Sun Also Rises is a book that people have read), but this opus leaps right in with "Families are children’s first and most important teachers, advocates, and nurturers." That's not a problem, but the kind of governmental attitude that gives some folks fits starts to show up just one paragraph later with this sentence:
Both Departments recognize the critical role of family engagement in children’s success in the early and elementary education systems.
Does it? Why, that's mighty good of it, like a guy who says, "Lady, I think you look perfectly okay," or a white guy telling a brown guy, "Hey, I've decided it's perfectly okay for you to be here." Still can't see it? Then look at the definition of "family engagement."
We refer to “family engagement” as the systematic inclusion of families as partners in children’s development, learning, and wellness.
Congratulations, families! The government is going to "include" you as partners. It is the government's table. You're invited to have a seat at it, but it's their table. Consider how different this is than the feds saying, for instance, "We hope that families will allow us to serve as their partners as they do the important work of raising their children."
Can you imagine calling a parent in to a conference and opening with, "I'd like to invite you to help me raise and educate your child properly." If you can't, you are not prepared to be a government bureaucrat.
Gallery of the Obvious
We kick things off with some over views. First, there's an overview of the research ranging from the ridiculously obvious ("warm, responsive and sensitive parenting promotes social-emotional competence and academic success") to the poorly reasoned (we know there's a connection between reading to children and later vocabulary and success, but we get confused about correlation and causation) to blindingly obvious information that we often ignore in our other policies (growing up in poverty and unstable families makes learning hard).
We recap policies like Head Start and IDEA and ESEA that recognize some of this engagement stuff. Because bureaucracies have no sense of irony, we will not note that the USED has done its best to completely trash IDEA.
We will also fuzzy up the language by mixing up engagement with families and engagement within families.
Then we'll reach a conclusion that despite the obvious importance of family and stuff, "family engagement is not equally valued or implemented across the early childhood and elementary systems." Because passive voice is a great way to avoid explaining exactly what you're talking about/ Who is not valuing family engagement? That would probably be useful to know if we're going to fix the problem, but it remains a mystery.
The Obstacles
The feds have some theories about why the valuing and implementing isn't happening.
* The perception that engaging with the family is just sort of extra, and that the mission is to work on the child. Somehow these unnamed persons miss that a small child's life is "intertwined" with lives of the family. Are those unnamed person clueless dopes?
* The local, state and federal authorities give too little guidance or requirements. Yup. When people screw up, it's because The Authorities didn't micro-manage them enough.
* Not enough resources. Well, now, there you may be onto something.
* The system is trying to do family engagement, but neglects to notice, understand or respect the culture and language of the family.
* "Teacher and provider workforce" (!!??) doesn't get trained properly in family engagement.
But The Authorities have figured out that something needs to be done-- and that something reveals yet another obstacle, because here's the federal idea of a solution:
”High-quality” early childhood programs should systematically include specific, measurable, and evidence-based family engagement strategies that are attuned to the needs and interests of a diverse array of primary caregivers, including but not limited to fathers/male caregivers, mothers/female caregivers, young parents, grandparents, foster parents and others.
No, I'm not talking about the list of caregivers-- that's perfectly fine. What exactly is a "specific, measurable and evidence-based" strategy for connecting in a working relationship with a family? The administration's data fetish has taken it to some ridiculous places before, and this might be even worse. Will we develop a Parent Pair-Bonding Stability Index? Will there be a standardized test to measure how well the parents and teachers like each other? Or will these data be generated by unicorns dancing through fields of shamrocks looking for the coordinates of El Dorado?
How To Do The Engagey Thing
The feds offer up their list of principles of effective family engagement practices. Let's get clued in.
First (like even before #1), you have to "establish a culture where families are seen as assets and partners in children's development, learning and wellness." Once again-- apparently it's our world, and families just live in it. Maybe we could see ourselves as the families' partners instead, which is definitely better than just assuming that of course Those People can't parent properly. But in the interests of balance, we have to note some families are not actually assets in their children's development. We all have stories of students who would have been better off raised by wolves: the student who was always tired because the trailer she lived in was always cold because Dad spent the utilities money on beer; the student whose mother was in prison after trying to run over that student with a car when the student was eight years old; the student whose parents shaved her head because she was defiant. So, yes, it's a mistake to assume that families aren't in the game when it comes to raising their kids, but it's also a mistake not to pay attention when they tell us through word and deed that they are not involved, interested or invested in their children. Point being, this little note tossed off by the document builds the whole structure on a foundation carved out of some huge and complicated assumptions. Just saying.
But assuming we somehow find such a culture, what are those principles?
Create continuity for children and families. I thought this might mean something useful like "don't staff the school with two-year TFA temps," but no, it means something far more alarming:
Implement a vision for family engagement that begins prenatally and continues across settings and throughout a child’s developmental and educational experiences.
So, yeah. As soon as you know you're pregnant, the government will be there to get a-workin' on your child. Um. Yikes.
Value equal partnership between families and professionals. Equal? So, the family is not the primary party responsible for raising this child? Yeah, this is going to go over super-well with conservative parent groups.
Develop goal-oriented relationships that are linked to development and learning. Oh, man. I'll try to summarize this in a minute but reading the bureaucracy-speak makes me feel all slimy. Basically, the relationship between families and professional staff takes time, but they should learn to work "jointly" on goals and strategies and learning. Like many paragraphs in the document, this one barely suggests that we are talking about helping a real live human being grow up.
Prioritize engagement around children's social-emotional and behavioral health. Damn. "Ensure constant monitoring and communication regarding children's social-emotional and behavioral health." Good lord, faceless bureaucrats-- do you even hear yourselves?? "Constant monitoring"??!! And then "ensure that children's social-emotional and behavioral needs are met" like somebody has the magical powers to do that.
Ensure that everything is culturally and linguistically "responsive." While this is an exceptionally valid point, it does not appear to make allowances for cultures that say that the family is responsible for the child and the government is responsible for backing the hell up.
Train staff people to engage with families. Gotta tell you-- if somebody doesn't know how to engage productively with other carbon-based life forms, I'm not sure you can train them to do it well. But certainly people who aren't born to the community in which they're teaching need to learn about that community. (Probably take more than five weeks, though)
Build families' capabilities and connections. Building connections sounds awesome. Robert Putnam's book Our Kids talks about how having connections is one of the privileges of wealth. Giving families ways to reach out, get help, and be heard-- that would be swell.
Embed family engagement within programs, school, and community stuff. And continuously learn and improve. That last one seems obvious and hardly worthy of saying out loud until you remember that NCLB and ESSA and certainly Common Core (not technically a federal program-- just a federally beloved program) have no such provisions. So hooray for federally recognizing a need for a program to learn and improve, I guess.
Implementing effective family engagement practices to promote positive child outcomes will require bold leadership and dedication from all institutions where children learn.
First, "positive child outcomes" is the kind of cold, soullessly vague language that makes people hate the bureaucrats. Second, it doesn't really require "bold leadership." Connecting and involving and helping parents is a marathon, not a sprint, and it benefits from solid, steady, stable work. What the Folks In Charge can do is give teachers (and staff) the space and resources to do their jobs.
Now, if you want organizations and schools to lead an incursion into people's homes, that may require leadership. Not so much "bold" leadership as "pushy, intrusive, dismissive of the people you're there to serve" leadership.
State-level Stuff
The plan goes on to delineate what state and local authorities should do.
On the state level, recommendations include investing and allocating resources and training to get programs all engagey. Plus establishing policies that help. Plus "communicate constant messages" aka drop some PR bombs on the issue.Because "messaging" is almost as important as actually doing something. Also, make sure that colleges and universities are training people to do this stuff.
Pretty pedestrian stuff. But then there's this recommendation.
Develop and integrate family engagement indicators into existing data systems
They offer a couple of suggestions of where such data might be found, like child care quality rating systems, higher education coursework, and family surveys, so, no-- they don't have any idea how to measure these things they say they want to measure.
And they would like states to set up an incentive to reward folks for doing this stuff that we don't know how to measure the effectiveness of, though it does look like they might be willing to go old school and measure inputs, whether those programs reap identifiable results or not.
Local Stuff
The plan has recommendations for local establishments as well. These run a bit more specific than the others, and come closer-but-no-cigar to crucial elements missing so far.
The devil, as always, is in the details. "Families as Decision Makers" is an encouraging heading, but it's followed by "Schools and programs should establish policies that ensure parents and families are prepared to participate in planning, decision-making and oversight groups." So families can have a seat at the table if they show us they're ready to do it the right way.
Some of the recommendations will be familiar as Things Many Districts Already Do, such as home visits. That also includes local versions of the same things featured elsewhere in the report. That includes the data fetish. Look-- here's a detail that's not scary at all.
Local schools and programs should track progress on family engagement goals, as detailed in family engagement plans.
So, you know-- the feds would like families to think of them as another family member. Maybe an older, wiser, brother. Honestly-- does anybody ever read these documents and think about how they look to civilians?
What's Missing
If we go waaaaaaaaaaayy back to the beginning, we find citations of evidence about the ways that poverty and family instability get in the way of student learning. But we have to go waaaaaaayyy back to the beginning because those facts are never acknowledged again.
There's no question that some families need help, and that the children growing up in those homes have more decks stacked against them than a drunk in crooked back-jack parlor. I sympathize, as I will bet almost every teacher does, with the point of view that says, "Well, we can't just stand back and do nothing and hope for the best." I certainly don't sympathize with the point of view that says, "Well, you know, there's no helping Those People."
But somehow, when I think of outreach and help and support and strengthening of families and community, my first thought is not, "Well, what these folks need is constant data monitoring from the moment they conceive." Nor do I sympathize with a stance that says, "I'm from the government and I'm here to offer to let you help me raise your child."
I'm not a mushy person, but I cannot read a report like this without being struck by the complete absence of warm, human language in addressing a human challenge. I don't know how you address these issues without using words like "love" and "respect" and "empathy" and "kindness," but I know you definitely can address them without resorting to "data."
Most importantly
Remember what I said waaaayyy back at the beginning-- this document is open to comment until January 4th. If reading all this just gave you a huge headache, zip on over there and comment. Who knows-- maybe Acting Pretend Secretary of Education John King might send it back to the drawing board. At least you will have helped generate some data.
It's a policy so bureaucraticky that it took two departments-- Education plus Health and Human Services-- to come up with it. Like all good government documents, it ranges from dull to obvious to dumb to terrifying. And it wants to address, in particular, pre-K. Also pre-pre-pre-K. Its stated purpose is to formulate some policies "on systematically engaging families in their children’s development, learning, and wellness, across early childhood and elementary education settings."
Announcing the Problem
I tell my students never to open a piece of writing with a Bulletin from Captain Obvious (The Sun Also Rises is a book that people have read), but this opus leaps right in with "Families are children’s first and most important teachers, advocates, and nurturers." That's not a problem, but the kind of governmental attitude that gives some folks fits starts to show up just one paragraph later with this sentence:
Both Departments recognize the critical role of family engagement in children’s success in the early and elementary education systems.
Does it? Why, that's mighty good of it, like a guy who says, "Lady, I think you look perfectly okay," or a white guy telling a brown guy, "Hey, I've decided it's perfectly okay for you to be here." Still can't see it? Then look at the definition of "family engagement."
We refer to “family engagement” as the systematic inclusion of families as partners in children’s development, learning, and wellness.
Congratulations, families! The government is going to "include" you as partners. It is the government's table. You're invited to have a seat at it, but it's their table. Consider how different this is than the feds saying, for instance, "We hope that families will allow us to serve as their partners as they do the important work of raising their children."
Can you imagine calling a parent in to a conference and opening with, "I'd like to invite you to help me raise and educate your child properly." If you can't, you are not prepared to be a government bureaucrat.
Gallery of the Obvious
We kick things off with some over views. First, there's an overview of the research ranging from the ridiculously obvious ("warm, responsive and sensitive parenting promotes social-emotional competence and academic success") to the poorly reasoned (we know there's a connection between reading to children and later vocabulary and success, but we get confused about correlation and causation) to blindingly obvious information that we often ignore in our other policies (growing up in poverty and unstable families makes learning hard).
We recap policies like Head Start and IDEA and ESEA that recognize some of this engagement stuff. Because bureaucracies have no sense of irony, we will not note that the USED has done its best to completely trash IDEA.
We will also fuzzy up the language by mixing up engagement with families and engagement within families.
Then we'll reach a conclusion that despite the obvious importance of family and stuff, "family engagement is not equally valued or implemented across the early childhood and elementary systems." Because passive voice is a great way to avoid explaining exactly what you're talking about/ Who is not valuing family engagement? That would probably be useful to know if we're going to fix the problem, but it remains a mystery.
The Obstacles
The feds have some theories about why the valuing and implementing isn't happening.
* The perception that engaging with the family is just sort of extra, and that the mission is to work on the child. Somehow these unnamed persons miss that a small child's life is "intertwined" with lives of the family. Are those unnamed person clueless dopes?
* The local, state and federal authorities give too little guidance or requirements. Yup. When people screw up, it's because The Authorities didn't micro-manage them enough.
* Not enough resources. Well, now, there you may be onto something.
* The system is trying to do family engagement, but neglects to notice, understand or respect the culture and language of the family.
* "Teacher and provider workforce" (!!??) doesn't get trained properly in family engagement.
But The Authorities have figured out that something needs to be done-- and that something reveals yet another obstacle, because here's the federal idea of a solution:
”High-quality” early childhood programs should systematically include specific, measurable, and evidence-based family engagement strategies that are attuned to the needs and interests of a diverse array of primary caregivers, including but not limited to fathers/male caregivers, mothers/female caregivers, young parents, grandparents, foster parents and others.
No, I'm not talking about the list of caregivers-- that's perfectly fine. What exactly is a "specific, measurable and evidence-based" strategy for connecting in a working relationship with a family? The administration's data fetish has taken it to some ridiculous places before, and this might be even worse. Will we develop a Parent Pair-Bonding Stability Index? Will there be a standardized test to measure how well the parents and teachers like each other? Or will these data be generated by unicorns dancing through fields of shamrocks looking for the coordinates of El Dorado?
How To Do The Engagey Thing
The feds offer up their list of principles of effective family engagement practices. Let's get clued in.
First (like even before #1), you have to "establish a culture where families are seen as assets and partners in children's development, learning and wellness." Once again-- apparently it's our world, and families just live in it. Maybe we could see ourselves as the families' partners instead, which is definitely better than just assuming that of course Those People can't parent properly. But in the interests of balance, we have to note some families are not actually assets in their children's development. We all have stories of students who would have been better off raised by wolves: the student who was always tired because the trailer she lived in was always cold because Dad spent the utilities money on beer; the student whose mother was in prison after trying to run over that student with a car when the student was eight years old; the student whose parents shaved her head because she was defiant. So, yes, it's a mistake to assume that families aren't in the game when it comes to raising their kids, but it's also a mistake not to pay attention when they tell us through word and deed that they are not involved, interested or invested in their children. Point being, this little note tossed off by the document builds the whole structure on a foundation carved out of some huge and complicated assumptions. Just saying.
But assuming we somehow find such a culture, what are those principles?
Create continuity for children and families. I thought this might mean something useful like "don't staff the school with two-year TFA temps," but no, it means something far more alarming:
Implement a vision for family engagement that begins prenatally and continues across settings and throughout a child’s developmental and educational experiences.
So, yeah. As soon as you know you're pregnant, the government will be there to get a-workin' on your child. Um. Yikes.
Value equal partnership between families and professionals. Equal? So, the family is not the primary party responsible for raising this child? Yeah, this is going to go over super-well with conservative parent groups.
Develop goal-oriented relationships that are linked to development and learning. Oh, man. I'll try to summarize this in a minute but reading the bureaucracy-speak makes me feel all slimy. Basically, the relationship between families and professional staff takes time, but they should learn to work "jointly" on goals and strategies and learning. Like many paragraphs in the document, this one barely suggests that we are talking about helping a real live human being grow up.
Prioritize engagement around children's social-emotional and behavioral health. Damn. "Ensure constant monitoring and communication regarding children's social-emotional and behavioral health." Good lord, faceless bureaucrats-- do you even hear yourselves?? "Constant monitoring"??!! And then "ensure that children's social-emotional and behavioral needs are met" like somebody has the magical powers to do that.
Ensure that everything is culturally and linguistically "responsive." While this is an exceptionally valid point, it does not appear to make allowances for cultures that say that the family is responsible for the child and the government is responsible for backing the hell up.
Train staff people to engage with families. Gotta tell you-- if somebody doesn't know how to engage productively with other carbon-based life forms, I'm not sure you can train them to do it well. But certainly people who aren't born to the community in which they're teaching need to learn about that community. (Probably take more than five weeks, though)
Build families' capabilities and connections. Building connections sounds awesome. Robert Putnam's book Our Kids talks about how having connections is one of the privileges of wealth. Giving families ways to reach out, get help, and be heard-- that would be swell.
Embed family engagement within programs, school, and community stuff. And continuously learn and improve. That last one seems obvious and hardly worthy of saying out loud until you remember that NCLB and ESSA and certainly Common Core (not technically a federal program-- just a federally beloved program) have no such provisions. So hooray for federally recognizing a need for a program to learn and improve, I guess.
Implementing effective family engagement practices to promote positive child outcomes will require bold leadership and dedication from all institutions where children learn.
First, "positive child outcomes" is the kind of cold, soullessly vague language that makes people hate the bureaucrats. Second, it doesn't really require "bold leadership." Connecting and involving and helping parents is a marathon, not a sprint, and it benefits from solid, steady, stable work. What the Folks In Charge can do is give teachers (and staff) the space and resources to do their jobs.
Now, if you want organizations and schools to lead an incursion into people's homes, that may require leadership. Not so much "bold" leadership as "pushy, intrusive, dismissive of the people you're there to serve" leadership.
State-level Stuff
The plan goes on to delineate what state and local authorities should do.
On the state level, recommendations include investing and allocating resources and training to get programs all engagey. Plus establishing policies that help. Plus "communicate constant messages" aka drop some PR bombs on the issue.Because "messaging" is almost as important as actually doing something. Also, make sure that colleges and universities are training people to do this stuff.
Pretty pedestrian stuff. But then there's this recommendation.
Develop and integrate family engagement indicators into existing data systems
They offer a couple of suggestions of where such data might be found, like child care quality rating systems, higher education coursework, and family surveys, so, no-- they don't have any idea how to measure these things they say they want to measure.
And they would like states to set up an incentive to reward folks for doing this stuff that we don't know how to measure the effectiveness of, though it does look like they might be willing to go old school and measure inputs, whether those programs reap identifiable results or not.
Local Stuff
The plan has recommendations for local establishments as well. These run a bit more specific than the others, and come closer-but-no-cigar to crucial elements missing so far.
The devil, as always, is in the details. "Families as Decision Makers" is an encouraging heading, but it's followed by "Schools and programs should establish policies that ensure parents and families are prepared to participate in planning, decision-making and oversight groups." So families can have a seat at the table if they show us they're ready to do it the right way.
Some of the recommendations will be familiar as Things Many Districts Already Do, such as home visits. That also includes local versions of the same things featured elsewhere in the report. That includes the data fetish. Look-- here's a detail that's not scary at all.
Local schools and programs should track progress on family engagement goals, as detailed in family engagement plans.
So, you know-- the feds would like families to think of them as another family member. Maybe an older, wiser, brother. Honestly-- does anybody ever read these documents and think about how they look to civilians?
What's Missing
If we go waaaaaaaaaaayy back to the beginning, we find citations of evidence about the ways that poverty and family instability get in the way of student learning. But we have to go waaaaaaayyy back to the beginning because those facts are never acknowledged again.
There's no question that some families need help, and that the children growing up in those homes have more decks stacked against them than a drunk in crooked back-jack parlor. I sympathize, as I will bet almost every teacher does, with the point of view that says, "Well, we can't just stand back and do nothing and hope for the best." I certainly don't sympathize with the point of view that says, "Well, you know, there's no helping Those People."
But somehow, when I think of outreach and help and support and strengthening of families and community, my first thought is not, "Well, what these folks need is constant data monitoring from the moment they conceive." Nor do I sympathize with a stance that says, "I'm from the government and I'm here to offer to let you help me raise your child."
I'm not a mushy person, but I cannot read a report like this without being struck by the complete absence of warm, human language in addressing a human challenge. I don't know how you address these issues without using words like "love" and "respect" and "empathy" and "kindness," but I know you definitely can address them without resorting to "data."
Most importantly
Remember what I said waaaayyy back at the beginning-- this document is open to comment until January 4th. If reading all this just gave you a huge headache, zip on over there and comment. Who knows-- maybe Acting Pretend Secretary of Education John King might send it back to the drawing board. At least you will have helped generate some data.
Thursday, December 17, 2015
Gulen Charters In Trouble Again
The Gulen network of charters is perhaps the most transparent abuse of the charter school system in the US, and their troubled nature is on display again in the midwest.
A clout-heavy charter-school firm that operates four taxpayer-funded schools in Chicago is suspected of defrauding the government by funneling more than $5 million in federal grants to insiders and “away from the charter schools,” according to court records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.
The Sun-Times reports that the FBI is investigating "a scheme to defraud federal programs" running back to "at least 2007." The probe is being run out of the FBI's Cleveland office, which would not comment because the investigation is ongoing.
This particular scheme involved the Concept Charter School chain, and involved bringing in E-Rate funds and funneling them to private companies "affiliated with" Concept's chief information officer, including funneling that money through the Bank of Asya in Turkey, a bank alleged founded and operated by Gulen followers.
That information officer has since sort of, well, vanished from the US. But a computer consultant named Stephen Draviam, who worked for Concept until they cur him off and replaced him with other vendors who have "extensive ties" to the charter operators (read any story about Gulen schools and you'll run into the phrase "extensive ties" many times) has apparently talked to them. He may want to be careful about that. Another former Concept official named Mustafa Emanet broke ties with Concept and suddenly found himself arrested in Turkey for heroin possession. He lives in Ohio now.
The story that emerges here is the same one that emerged in the work of reporter James Pilcher of the Cincinatti Enquirer in October of 2014. Folks with Gulen ties open a charter school, staff it with foreign teachers on H-1B visas, and then begin strip-mining US taxpayers. Grant money, state funding, anything not tied down is sent back to The Movement. Even the teachers are expected to kick a percentage of their salary back to The Movement. The particular brand of fraud that the Sun-Times is writing about is grant fraud-- writing fake grants for tech grants for the schools while simply using vendors with "extensive connections" to just send those grant dollars to The Movement.
The stories are legion. Chicago Public Schools denied Concept two more charters, so Gulen-connected folks took some Illinois politicians on a trip and CPS was overruled by the state. You can find entire blogs devoted to Gule shenanigans, like this one or this one.
Concept is one of the top charter companies in the Great Lakes region-- and their purpose is to collect US tax dollars to send to Gulen's supporters.
So what's a Gulen? Fethullah Gulen is most often referred to as a "reclusive cleric," a displaced political figure from Turkey who is currently out of power, cooling his heels in the Poconos and supposedly waiting for his chance. You can read plenty about his thoughts on his website. The Turkish government would like to have him back-- they've issued a warrant for his arrest. The US has shown no inclination to send him home, but he's also under investigation by the FBI.
The ongoing Gulen network scandals are a reminder of just how big a tool for fraud and theft of US taxpayer money the charter movement can be. We tend to talk as if charter school fraud is "vacation home in Aruba" scale theft, when in fact the accusations against Gulen point out that we're actually talking "maintain a foreign government in exile" scale of money. The narrative about the Gulen movement using US charter schools to scam US taxpayer dollars to run an entire Turkish religious-political movement is both convincing and scary, and more importantly, it's a reminder of just how badly the charter movement can be turned against the interests of American children, taxpayers, and voters.
A clout-heavy charter-school firm that operates four taxpayer-funded schools in Chicago is suspected of defrauding the government by funneling more than $5 million in federal grants to insiders and “away from the charter schools,” according to court records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.
The Sun-Times reports that the FBI is investigating "a scheme to defraud federal programs" running back to "at least 2007." The probe is being run out of the FBI's Cleveland office, which would not comment because the investigation is ongoing.
This particular scheme involved the Concept Charter School chain, and involved bringing in E-Rate funds and funneling them to private companies "affiliated with" Concept's chief information officer, including funneling that money through the Bank of Asya in Turkey, a bank alleged founded and operated by Gulen followers.
That information officer has since sort of, well, vanished from the US. But a computer consultant named Stephen Draviam, who worked for Concept until they cur him off and replaced him with other vendors who have "extensive ties" to the charter operators (read any story about Gulen schools and you'll run into the phrase "extensive ties" many times) has apparently talked to them. He may want to be careful about that. Another former Concept official named Mustafa Emanet broke ties with Concept and suddenly found himself arrested in Turkey for heroin possession. He lives in Ohio now.
The story that emerges here is the same one that emerged in the work of reporter James Pilcher of the Cincinatti Enquirer in October of 2014. Folks with Gulen ties open a charter school, staff it with foreign teachers on H-1B visas, and then begin strip-mining US taxpayers. Grant money, state funding, anything not tied down is sent back to The Movement. Even the teachers are expected to kick a percentage of their salary back to The Movement. The particular brand of fraud that the Sun-Times is writing about is grant fraud-- writing fake grants for tech grants for the schools while simply using vendors with "extensive connections" to just send those grant dollars to The Movement.
The stories are legion. Chicago Public Schools denied Concept two more charters, so Gulen-connected folks took some Illinois politicians on a trip and CPS was overruled by the state. You can find entire blogs devoted to Gule shenanigans, like this one or this one.
Concept is one of the top charter companies in the Great Lakes region-- and their purpose is to collect US tax dollars to send to Gulen's supporters.
So what's a Gulen? Fethullah Gulen is most often referred to as a "reclusive cleric," a displaced political figure from Turkey who is currently out of power, cooling his heels in the Poconos and supposedly waiting for his chance. You can read plenty about his thoughts on his website. The Turkish government would like to have him back-- they've issued a warrant for his arrest. The US has shown no inclination to send him home, but he's also under investigation by the FBI.
The ongoing Gulen network scandals are a reminder of just how big a tool for fraud and theft of US taxpayer money the charter movement can be. We tend to talk as if charter school fraud is "vacation home in Aruba" scale theft, when in fact the accusations against Gulen point out that we're actually talking "maintain a foreign government in exile" scale of money. The narrative about the Gulen movement using US charter schools to scam US taxpayer dollars to run an entire Turkish religious-political movement is both convincing and scary, and more importantly, it's a reminder of just how badly the charter movement can be turned against the interests of American children, taxpayers, and voters.
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
Homework and Flipping
It was an odd juxtaposition. There on my twitter feed, side by side, a link to an article arguing against homework, and a link to an argument favoring the flipped classroom.
The arguments against homework are many-- as many as there are different types of homework. Students don't really benefit from it. Students don't really do it. And those are just educator arguments-- my students will also argue that after they leave the school building, that time is their time, for work, for family, for whatever pursuits they choose to pursue. That's the point of view that leads commenters to say that homework is bad for the whole child.
And yet what is a flipped classroom except a classroom that runs on huge amounts of homework.
I have no strong feelings about the flipped classroom-- I've been doing it my whole career, only instead of saying "Go home and watch this video," I've been saying "Go home and read this book." I don't do a lot of traditional homework beyond some occasionally "Go forth and practice this skill on your own." But my honors students in particular are expected to do the readings and write the papers primarily on their own time.
I read teachers who have success flipping, and I have encountered the following conversation among students many times as well:
Chris: Did you watch that video last night?
Pat: Nah. He's just going to have to explain it all in class anyway.
I have found technology useful for extending the classroom. Back when my school district still used Moodle, I could run entire units as on-line segments, which made a nice way to compensate for the class time that I was losing. This year I have a class of students who are required to blog, sometimes on prompts related to classwork, sometimes to other prompts, and always on other topics of their own choosing. And I've found on-line elements can be a good way to do units that involve "Go figure out what this is and then explain it to me in your own words with either created or found examples" (e.g. logical fallacies). Those then become part of the tool box that I expect them to be able to use in class work.
So am I good teacher because I'm using technology to extend the learning experience beyond the temporal and physical boundaries of my classroom, or am I terrible teacher because I still give homework?
Fortunately for my professional peace of mind, I follow this rule: I neither accept or reject tools and techniques as a matter of policy, but use my best professional judgment to use activities and techniques that advance student learning and growth, and to avoid activities and techniques that do not. This, it should be noted, has to be decided on a case by case, class by class basis.
It's a perfect example of exactly why the solution to educational issues is not for the state or federal government decide for me how I should do my job and then mandate either the use or avoidance of particular pedagogy. I do not need a government regulation telling me I must always or never assign homework. At most, I may be well-served by a knowledgeable administrator who sits me down to say, "Here's where it looks like you're not hitting the mark right now."
But in the meantime, while I will continue to keep myself informed about the issues and viewpoints involved, I have no interest in the Great Homework Debate or the Great Flipping Push, and even less interest in having policymakers decide either discussion. I'd like to just do my job, thanks, and that includes using my informed professional judgment to make the best instructional decisions for my students. Just let me teach.
The arguments against homework are many-- as many as there are different types of homework. Students don't really benefit from it. Students don't really do it. And those are just educator arguments-- my students will also argue that after they leave the school building, that time is their time, for work, for family, for whatever pursuits they choose to pursue. That's the point of view that leads commenters to say that homework is bad for the whole child.
And yet what is a flipped classroom except a classroom that runs on huge amounts of homework.
I have no strong feelings about the flipped classroom-- I've been doing it my whole career, only instead of saying "Go home and watch this video," I've been saying "Go home and read this book." I don't do a lot of traditional homework beyond some occasionally "Go forth and practice this skill on your own." But my honors students in particular are expected to do the readings and write the papers primarily on their own time.
I read teachers who have success flipping, and I have encountered the following conversation among students many times as well:
Chris: Did you watch that video last night?
Pat: Nah. He's just going to have to explain it all in class anyway.
I have found technology useful for extending the classroom. Back when my school district still used Moodle, I could run entire units as on-line segments, which made a nice way to compensate for the class time that I was losing. This year I have a class of students who are required to blog, sometimes on prompts related to classwork, sometimes to other prompts, and always on other topics of their own choosing. And I've found on-line elements can be a good way to do units that involve "Go figure out what this is and then explain it to me in your own words with either created or found examples" (e.g. logical fallacies). Those then become part of the tool box that I expect them to be able to use in class work.
So am I good teacher because I'm using technology to extend the learning experience beyond the temporal and physical boundaries of my classroom, or am I terrible teacher because I still give homework?
Fortunately for my professional peace of mind, I follow this rule: I neither accept or reject tools and techniques as a matter of policy, but use my best professional judgment to use activities and techniques that advance student learning and growth, and to avoid activities and techniques that do not. This, it should be noted, has to be decided on a case by case, class by class basis.
It's a perfect example of exactly why the solution to educational issues is not for the state or federal government decide for me how I should do my job and then mandate either the use or avoidance of particular pedagogy. I do not need a government regulation telling me I must always or never assign homework. At most, I may be well-served by a knowledgeable administrator who sits me down to say, "Here's where it looks like you're not hitting the mark right now."
But in the meantime, while I will continue to keep myself informed about the issues and viewpoints involved, I have no interest in the Great Homework Debate or the Great Flipping Push, and even less interest in having policymakers decide either discussion. I'd like to just do my job, thanks, and that includes using my informed professional judgment to make the best instructional decisions for my students. Just let me teach.
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
PA: Budget Fluffernuttery Threatens Schools
We have a budget problem in Pennsylvania. You could call it a budget "crisis," but that makes it sound like it just sort of happened, like a hurricane or male pattern baldness. You could call it a budget "impasse," but that suggests two grown up sides that can't find a compromise. Perhaps budget "screwup" or budget "failure so stupid it is raising the collective blood pressure of the entire state."
If it seems like we've been budget fiasco for a long time, that's because we have. Today is Day 168 of the ongoing budget not-done-on-time event.
There was a time when I would have agreed with a bi-partisan assessment. In the early stages, the GOP controlled PA House and Senate wanted to act as if the previous GOP governor had not been decisively kicked to the curb. Newly-elected Governor Tom Wolf, whose previous work experience is running a successful family business, did not initially seem to grasp that he is not a CEO who can order the legislature around as if they are his minions.
But many of the parties got on a learning curve and seemed to make progress.
At first it seemed like a manageable catastrophe. After all, we're used to this-- we've had five late budgets in ten years.
True, there was fallout. You may remember that the Chester Upland school district, underfunded by the state and sucked dry by charters, had to ask its teachers to work for free when the state missed its first subsidy payment. Ha. Those were the days, when the budget baloney was only fifty days old.
Meanwhile, many other districts turned to loans, lines of credit, or simply ate up whatever savings they had in the banks.
As the clock ticked, Wolf and the Senate GOP worked out a deal. Each gave up some features that they had wanted in the budget, but that's what happens when grown-ups negotiate. But as that budget gathered steam, it became evident there was still a major obstacle-- the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. Noted for their lack of leadership, the House GOP could not get its act together. Or, I should say, cannot get its act together, because as of today, their act is still not together.
By this time, the state should have paid out almost all of its school support money. At this point, it has paid out $0.00. The school districts of Pennsylvania are collectively billions of dollars short.
They can get parts of their act together, including the part that allows them to double take-over some more Philly schools. Philadelphia schools were taken over by the state decades ago, but the state has incredibly failed to magically transform them, so the state would now like to take them over from the state (you can read more about that foolishness here).
Now some schools, including a few districts just up the road from me, have decided they may just stay closed after Christmas break rather than borrow more money and incur more fees and interest.
Only--ha!-- the joke is on them because the Associated Press now reports that Pennsylvania's budget snafu is so spectacular that school districts may not be able to borrow money even if they want to!
"While we consider school aid to be a priority state expenditure, the budget stalemate has led us to conclude that Pennsylvania's state aid payments are no longer a reliable and stable source of funds," Standard and Poor's wrote.
The final icing on the cake? Believe it or not, it is now time for school districts to begin working on their budgets for 2016-2017. Yes, the state's convoluted system requires school districts to declare soon if they want to raise taxes above the index, although that presumes funding based on property taxes, which is one of the bones of contention in the budget and of course schools right now as I type this have no idea how much money they're eventually getting from the state for THIS year, let alone where they will stand going into NEXT year.
Will the House budge? At last count the House GOP was about half a billion dollars and a few ideological points away from the Senate GOP, and while many Pennsylvanians are ready to move past wringing hands to wringing necks, there are also folks cheering the House on for "standing firm." Note that Pennsylvania is a spectacularly gerrymandered state, to the point that while Democrats win more votes, Republicans win more seats. But gerrymandering invariably means that politicians must play to their base, and many House Republicans are doing just that.
It is hard to follow the unfolding mess because so much of the action takes place in back rooms. But there is literally no sign that this is going to be resolved any time soon. In the meantime, however, there is the real possibility that the incompetence of House politicians may actually bring education in Pennsylvania to a stumbling, gut-wrenching, collapsed-in-a-heap halt.
If it seems like we've been budget fiasco for a long time, that's because we have. Today is Day 168 of the ongoing budget not-done-on-time event.
There was a time when I would have agreed with a bi-partisan assessment. In the early stages, the GOP controlled PA House and Senate wanted to act as if the previous GOP governor had not been decisively kicked to the curb. Newly-elected Governor Tom Wolf, whose previous work experience is running a successful family business, did not initially seem to grasp that he is not a CEO who can order the legislature around as if they are his minions.
But many of the parties got on a learning curve and seemed to make progress.
At first it seemed like a manageable catastrophe. After all, we're used to this-- we've had five late budgets in ten years.
True, there was fallout. You may remember that the Chester Upland school district, underfunded by the state and sucked dry by charters, had to ask its teachers to work for free when the state missed its first subsidy payment. Ha. Those were the days, when the budget baloney was only fifty days old.
Meanwhile, many other districts turned to loans, lines of credit, or simply ate up whatever savings they had in the banks.
As the clock ticked, Wolf and the Senate GOP worked out a deal. Each gave up some features that they had wanted in the budget, but that's what happens when grown-ups negotiate. But as that budget gathered steam, it became evident there was still a major obstacle-- the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. Noted for their lack of leadership, the House GOP could not get its act together. Or, I should say, cannot get its act together, because as of today, their act is still not together.
By this time, the state should have paid out almost all of its school support money. At this point, it has paid out $0.00. The school districts of Pennsylvania are collectively billions of dollars short.
They can get parts of their act together, including the part that allows them to double take-over some more Philly schools. Philadelphia schools were taken over by the state decades ago, but the state has incredibly failed to magically transform them, so the state would now like to take them over from the state (you can read more about that foolishness here).
Now some schools, including a few districts just up the road from me, have decided they may just stay closed after Christmas break rather than borrow more money and incur more fees and interest.
Only--ha!-- the joke is on them because the Associated Press now reports that Pennsylvania's budget snafu is so spectacular that school districts may not be able to borrow money even if they want to!
"While we consider school aid to be a priority state expenditure, the budget stalemate has led us to conclude that Pennsylvania's state aid payments are no longer a reliable and stable source of funds," Standard and Poor's wrote.
The final icing on the cake? Believe it or not, it is now time for school districts to begin working on their budgets for 2016-2017. Yes, the state's convoluted system requires school districts to declare soon if they want to raise taxes above the index, although that presumes funding based on property taxes, which is one of the bones of contention in the budget and of course schools right now as I type this have no idea how much money they're eventually getting from the state for THIS year, let alone where they will stand going into NEXT year.
Will the House budge? At last count the House GOP was about half a billion dollars and a few ideological points away from the Senate GOP, and while many Pennsylvanians are ready to move past wringing hands to wringing necks, there are also folks cheering the House on for "standing firm." Note that Pennsylvania is a spectacularly gerrymandered state, to the point that while Democrats win more votes, Republicans win more seats. But gerrymandering invariably means that politicians must play to their base, and many House Republicans are doing just that.
It is hard to follow the unfolding mess because so much of the action takes place in back rooms. But there is literally no sign that this is going to be resolved any time soon. In the meantime, however, there is the real possibility that the incompetence of House politicians may actually bring education in Pennsylvania to a stumbling, gut-wrenching, collapsed-in-a-heap halt.
Monday, December 14, 2015
Arts and Community
My output will likely be down a bit this week because I have rehearsals every night and a performance Friday evening. I'm singing in a community chorus about 100 people who get together every other year to perform a big chunk of Handel's Messiah along with some other seasonal stuff.
We are all volunteers who have real jobs doing other things. I sing in a section with my doctor, a couple of students, my father-in-law, a psychologist-counselor, a few retired folks, including some who used to work building coal mining machinery. We'll be accompanied in performance by a small pick-up orchestra.
We'll perform in the town's one theater, a performance space that was purchased and reconditioned by the local community theater group about twenty years ago. If this goes like most years, the concert will be close to selling out.
For most of the people involved, this is a typical use of spare time. Many of the singers also sing in their church choir. For me, this is how I spend much of my off-duty time. I play in a 159-year-old town band-- concerts on the bandstand in the city park and everything-- that is also filled entirely by non-professional amateurs. And I work with community theater, also loaded with people who have a real job, but who somehow seek out artistic activities in their lives.
Arts and music are under attack in many school systems. This is not new. They have always been under attack. It's just a little worse now that the forces of reformsterism have been busy stripping public schools of resources; when the budget gets tight, the arts always look like an easy target for destruction.
The arts matter. We spend a lot of time trying to defend how they matter to individual students, how they enhance the school life of children throughout the system. But the arts matter more than that.
I live in a small place, a not-particularly-wealthy place. We don't have a paid symphony orchestra, a paid chorus, a paid regional theater.Sure, we can travel, or pop in a recording, or watch a video.
But the life of this community is also enriched by people who sing and play and perform and create, and do it all right here. This Friday we are not going to present the best rendering ever of the Messiah, but it will be damn good, and it will be live, and it will be here. Live matters in the arts. It always matters. Anybody who says differently should try kissing a picture of their beloved.
There is a richness and depth to the arts, live and in person and especially produced by members of your own community, that cannot be found anywhere else. The arts are good for students because students who have grown up in the arts are good for their communities, for their families, for their friends. The world is a better place for students who have grown up with understanding and abilities in the arts.
So stand up for the arts in your school system, not just because they are good for your students and your school, but because they are good for your entire community, for the world you live in. Reflect on that as the holiday season advances and we search for meaning in it the best way we know how-- not just through words or essays or speeches, but through the kind of deep and true expression that best comes through the arts.
We are all volunteers who have real jobs doing other things. I sing in a section with my doctor, a couple of students, my father-in-law, a psychologist-counselor, a few retired folks, including some who used to work building coal mining machinery. We'll be accompanied in performance by a small pick-up orchestra.
We'll perform in the town's one theater, a performance space that was purchased and reconditioned by the local community theater group about twenty years ago. If this goes like most years, the concert will be close to selling out.
For most of the people involved, this is a typical use of spare time. Many of the singers also sing in their church choir. For me, this is how I spend much of my off-duty time. I play in a 159-year-old town band-- concerts on the bandstand in the city park and everything-- that is also filled entirely by non-professional amateurs. And I work with community theater, also loaded with people who have a real job, but who somehow seek out artistic activities in their lives.
Arts and music are under attack in many school systems. This is not new. They have always been under attack. It's just a little worse now that the forces of reformsterism have been busy stripping public schools of resources; when the budget gets tight, the arts always look like an easy target for destruction.
The arts matter. We spend a lot of time trying to defend how they matter to individual students, how they enhance the school life of children throughout the system. But the arts matter more than that.
I live in a small place, a not-particularly-wealthy place. We don't have a paid symphony orchestra, a paid chorus, a paid regional theater.Sure, we can travel, or pop in a recording, or watch a video.
But the life of this community is also enriched by people who sing and play and perform and create, and do it all right here. This Friday we are not going to present the best rendering ever of the Messiah, but it will be damn good, and it will be live, and it will be here. Live matters in the arts. It always matters. Anybody who says differently should try kissing a picture of their beloved.
There is a richness and depth to the arts, live and in person and especially produced by members of your own community, that cannot be found anywhere else. The arts are good for students because students who have grown up in the arts are good for their communities, for their families, for their friends. The world is a better place for students who have grown up with understanding and abilities in the arts.
So stand up for the arts in your school system, not just because they are good for your students and your school, but because they are good for your entire community, for the world you live in. Reflect on that as the holiday season advances and we search for meaning in it the best way we know how-- not just through words or essays or speeches, but through the kind of deep and true expression that best comes through the arts.
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