Disrupting the Moral Center

Sarah Jones at the New Republic yesterday posted a blistering take on technocracy entitled "The Year Silicon Valley Went Morally Bankrupt." It doesn't address education, but it surely could.

She takes us back to 1996, and “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" by John Perry Barlo, a statement of Silicon Valley's manifest destiny to rise over and above the nation that birthed it:

Barlow’s manifesto is undeniably grandiose. “We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth,” he announced. “We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.” This was more than an expression of ego. Barlow asserted a moral hierarchy, and in this new order, Silicon Valley outranked the world it had come to transform.  

Barlow's vision seems to keep the moral center of American democracy, but as examination and time have revealed, it's really the blueprint for the Betterocracy-- the mobility and openness of technology do not give all citizens an equal voice, but give all citizens an equal opportunity to rise to their appropriate level, because at the end of the day, Technocratic Bettercrats believe that some people really are better than others, and those who are Better should be in charge, and those who are Lesser should shut up.

Jones connects this to a moral aloofness, a technocratic solutionism, a belief that the only problems that really are problems are problems that have a technological solution. "Show us your problem," Silicone Valley says, "and we will disrupt the heck out of it." If it's not solvable by technology, it's not a real problem.

Jones centers on two examples. One is Peter Thiel, who bullied Gawker into silence and has been riding on the Trump train. Thiel is a vocal critic of democracy, diversity, and women, and like Trump, he has suffered the opposite of negative consequences for his stances. That Trump can connect with the Bettercrats of the tech world is not surprising-- they share a fundamental belief that might makes right, that if you can do something and you want to something and nobody can stop you from doing something, then there is no reason to rein yourself in. I'm not sure that these folks are morally aloof-- it's just that they are their own true north on the moral compass.

Jones also tosses out Mark Zuckerberg's unwillingness to come to grips with the journalistic power of facebook, and for extra fun reminds us that Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, who got caught touting a completely fictitious medical test company is still running that company, now claiming some new technomedimarvel, as if she hadn't been outed as an untrustworthy liar of epic proportions.

"Tech moguls," Jones writes, "strive to remake the world, but this year they behaved as if they owe us no explanation for their decisions."

But she of course need not have stopped with her three examples, nor did 2016 represent a sudden new emergence of this issue. Netflix mogul Reed Hastings famously complained that democratically-elected school boards should be done away with (they just get in the way of their Betters). Stephen Barr, who moguled the Green Dot Charter school chain, just backed off his run for Los Angeles mayor-- he was qualified to be mayor because he had run the charters, and he was qualified to run the charters because he wanted to-- but had originally launched the run because he intended "to disrupt the political establishment and turn our city around."

Education reform is rife with these Techno-Bettercrats. Sir Michael Barber, head mogul of the multinational edu-juggernaut Pearson, does not at the end of the day justify their attempts to remake the education system as profitable or good for kids, but as an act of Higher Moral Purpose. Sure, remaking the world when the world resists being remade presents some challenges, but those challenges never create a need to self-examine, to check the poles on one's moral compass. No, this is the reaction:

Be that as it may, the aspiration to meet these challenges is right

And of course, Jones has passed up the lowest hanging fruit of all-- Bill Gates, who believes that he has the right, even the obligation, to remake the nation's education system into the form that he believes is right. Nobody elected him, nobody asked him, and at no point did he submit himself to any kind of democratic process. Because democracy is a process by which a whole bunch of Lessers who shouldn't have a say inflict their will on their Betters. Gates has some ideas about how schools should work, so he's just going to implement them without discussion or explanation.

There's been a sudden shock that Donald Trump, in all his autocratic authoritarian glory, is going to be our President, but the truth is we've been working our way up to this for a while. Champions and vocal supporters of democracy have been few and far between. In government, both dems and GOP have looked for ways to thwart the will of the electorate, whether it is trying to skew elections by gaming the rules or trying to create policy out of the offices of unelected department appointees. All around the nation, giants walk among us, devoted not to the rules or the laws or some undergirding principles, but to their own greatness, their own vision, and their own power and ability to implement those visions. They are genius Gullivers, held down by puny Lessers and unions and the stupid government functionaries that get themselves elected by those Lessers.

And those Lessers that are hungry or homeless or struggling in minimal employment? They would be better off if they just learned to Stay in Place instead of trying to leach off their Betters. If I'm a Better and you're not-- well, maybe you deserve a little help, but it will be what I choose to give you and damn sure not what you try to take from me. I have wealth because I deserve it. It's mine. If you wanted some of this, you should have been better. In the meantime, I will certainly try to be benevolent and give you a little of the help that I think you deserve.

American exceptionalism? It's not America that's exceptional-- it's the small group of techno-disruptor-visionaries who aim to rebuild this country the way they think it should be built. They don't need a moral compass-- they are their own True North. And as they strip away the tiny people and democratic traditions holding them down, one by one, they have less and less need to pretend otherwise.

New Test Rules: Old Baloney

Yesterday, John King unveiled the Department of Education's final rules for testing under the Every Student Succeeds Act, aimed at spinning the continued emphasis on the Big Standardized Tests. Jennifer C. Kerr of the Associated Press signals that she bought the PR and fumbled the story with her very first sentence:

Aiming to reduce test-taking in America's classrooms, the Obama administration released final rules Wednesday to help states and school districts take a new approach to the standardized tests students must take each year.

If the Obama administration has ever done anything that was truly aimed at reducing test-taking, I have apparently forgotten all about it. The Obama administration increased the weight of standardized testing by using Race to the Top and RttT-lite waivers to double down on high stakes for testing. After a few years of realizing that the public was pushing back hard, they tried in both 2014 and 2015 to pretend that they had an "action plan" for cutting back on testing. This included some meaningless suggestions for how much time should be spent on testing, and a recommendation that schools cut back on all the other tests that weren't the Big Standardized Test.

This administration has stayed resolutely in the Cult of Testing, and they have not backed away a single inch in eight years. These new rules are no different.

King gives the AP a big fat slice of baloney right off the bat:

Our final regulations strike a balance by offering states flexibility to eliminate redundant testing and promote innovative assessments, while ensuring assessments continue to contribute to a well-rounded picture of how students and schools are doing.

"Continue" is a great word, since it assumes a fact not in evidence-- that BS Tests have been contributing to a well-rounded picture of how students and schools are doing. They haven't. They don't. And there's no actual evidence that they measure anything useful (though plenty of evidence that they don't). Then King gives us this gem:

Smarter assessments can make us all smarter.

Yes. And weighing the pig makes it heavier. And measuring your children makes them taller. And staring at a picture brings it into focus.

The softball reporting continues as Kerr writes

The idea is to focus more time on classroom learning and less on teaching-to-the test — something critics complained the administration had encouraged with grants and waivers that placed too much of an emphasis on standardized testing.

Whose idea is that, exactly, and how is it part of the rules? The suggestion in the USED PR is that an $8 million grant to Maryland and Nebraska is kicking off a new trial run for assessment innovation (Fun fact: Chester Finn, former head of the Fordham Institute and longtime conservative reformster, was just elected vice president of the Maryland Board of Education). This is part of the grant program that will allow up to seven states to try new and improved testing over five years. It looks kind of like chump change, but if corporations interested in piloting competency-based learning style assessment systems decide to get involved-- well, this is an open door that already has companies salivating.

Also, as expected, the states may replace one of the BS Tests with some other already-on-the-market test like the SAT or ACT. Sure, those tests were designed for completely different purposes and there's no reason to think they'll be an accurate measure of all student or school achievement, but hey-- neither is the PARCC, so why the hell not? If it's a standardized test, and you've heard of it, then it probably is a perfect assessment tool. Weighing the pig makes it heavier, and it's okay if you weigh it with a yardstick.

Oh, and the rules include no cap on time spent on testing because A) the cap idea was ridiculous, mostly because bureaucratic eduwonks pretend not to understand what test prep really is, B) it would interfere with competency-based personalized learning, which will feature standardized assessment every single day and C) nobody has paid caps the slightest attention, since they are the easiest rule to cheat on when you want to avoid the "punish" part of "test-and-punish." Kerr helpfully throws in the Council of Great City Schools' bogus figures on how much time is spent, failing to note that CGSC is a long-time member of the Cult of Testing.

So in short, here are your bullet points:

* The new rules on testing are just like the old rules, except for the parts that are worse.

* USED has once again successfully convinced major news outlets like the Associate Press to just run USED PR without questioning or challenging anything the department has to say.

 In short, life should not improve for the pigs, whether we're feeding them, weighing them, or putting lipstick on them.

 

What Do The Tests Measure?

Christopher Tienken (Seton Hall) has solved a mystery.

Along with Anthony Colella (Seton Hall), Christian Angelillo (Boonton Township SD), Meredith Fox (Nanuet Union SD), Kevin McCahill (George W. Miller Elementary) and Adam Wolfe (Peoria Unified SD), Tienken has once again answered the question-- what do the Big Standardized Tests actually measure?

Put another way, Tienken et. al. have demonstrated that we do not need to actually give the Big Standardized Test in order to generate the "student achievement" data, because we can generate the same data by looking at demographic information all by itself.

Tienken and his team used just three pieces of demographic data--

1) percentage of families in the community with income over $200K
2) percentage of people in the community in poverty
3) percentage of people in community with bachelor's degrees

Using that data alone, Tienken was able to predict school district test results accurately in most cases. In New Jersey 300 or so middle schools, the team could predict middle school math and language arts test scores for well over two thirds of the schools.

I suppose some folks could see this as good news ("Cancel the PARCC test and don't pay them a cent! We can just fudge our test results by plugging in demographic data!") but I'd characterize it more as frightening, given that ESSA continues to demand that teachers and administrators and schools be judged based on test scores (generally under the euphemism "student achievement") and if those test scores can be fudged based on data having nothing to do with what actually goes on inside the school, then a whole bunch of careers and funding are riding on things that have nothing to do with schools.

This is also one more reason that any future teacher (there are, I hear, still one or two out there) who is paying attention should know better than to take a job in a poor neighborhood, where anything from her professional standing to her future career is liable to be trashed by the demographics of her neighborhood.

There are other conclusions to be drawn here, not the least of which is that you are in one of those A-F school rating states, the best way to change your school's grade is to change your demographics (aka turn into a charter and recruit students from outside your old neighborhood).

Make sure to read this report and pass it on. It has been peer reviewed, it is legitimate research, and it does raise huge red-flaggy questions about the validity or usefulness of the BS Tests. At the very least you can be asking your state and national policy leaders, "If we can generate the same data by just analyzing demographics, why are we wasting time and money on these tests?"

In the meantime, here's an oldie but a goodie from Tienken, in case you like your explanations more video style.

ESSA Won't Spur "Best Practices"

Eric Kalenze, Director of Education Solutions at the Search Institute, is guest-blogging at Rick Hess's EdWeek spot this week. His interest leans towards questions of research and best practices and how any of those things ever hope to line up with actual classrooms. Today he's asking one particularly interesting question--

Will ESSA's Evidence Requirements Spur Actual Best Practices? comes with its own answer included-- no. Kalenze wants to jump ahead to the answer.

His premise itself is a bit faulty-- he concludes that best practices are not in use in classrooms because of this:

If the practices and ideals that feel right and we continually work to execute are indeed 'best', how can we continue to show weakly in international comparisons, leave scores of the same populations behind, and not see progress jump more steeply over time on internal measurements?

He's missing the more obvious answer. If everything I know tells me that my Big Stick is three feet long, and I pull out a tape measure and that tape measure tells me it's not three feet long at all, I should be looking at the tape measure. Kalenze is starting with the premise that things like PISA and Big Standardized Tests scores are an accurate and complete measure of student achievement and educational attainment. There is no reason to believe that they are such a measure, and in fact the discontinuity that Kalenze brings up is one more reason to suspect that they are NOT a good measure at all. He also moves from there to the issue of examining whether or not our best practices really are best, and that is always a worthwhile question. You can't hurt anything. If a best practice really is a beat practice, then examining it will only confirm its bestness.

But mostly Kalenze has noticed that schools don't really do much in the way of implementing Best Practices, and while he thinks it's swell that the newest version of education law (ESSA) calls for schools to implement evidence-based improvement strategies, he has no confidence that it's actually going to happen. And he sees three reasons why:

1) Limits of Cataloging Interventions. You can't implement what you can't find information about, and beyond the Institute of Education Science's What Works Clearinghouse (a wholly-owned subsidiary of the USED), there's not much to be found (and let me add that WWC is not a particularly impressive resource.

And this would be a good time to remind you that "evidence-based" is an extraordinarily loose framework that includes "somebody has expressed a convincing rationale even if they have no evidence." Yet there's still not much out there for teachers to choose from.

2) Ed Decision-Makers Are Key-- And They Need Better Research Literacy. In other words, if your principal or superintendent is neither up on the research or a very good student of same (not that I'm in any way suggesting that administrators are poor students, but, you know, "those who can't teach..."). Also, a lot of crappy research is packed in giant slabs of baloney, which means whoever reads through research in your district needs to have a nice sharp baloney slicer.

3) Flexibility With Responsibility Won't Move Needles on Leaders' Research Literacy. This may sound like jargon, but his point is dead on-- all that ESSA has really added is one more piece of paperwork for administrators to fill out, and other than jumping through that "wordsmithing hoop," they will be free to continue exactly as they have in the past.

I largely agree with Kalenze, as far as he goes. But the big problem here is that, despite the widespread wonkery on the subject, this is not a policy issue.

There is one single way that best practices are effectively spread-- from teacher to teacher. Mrs. Teachowicz says to her teacher colleague Mrs. McPedagog or her teacher friend Mrs. O'Teachlots, "Hey, here's this thing I've been using with my students to teach cheese straightening, and it really works well for me."

You can pitch research at me all day, and I will certainly scan it for possible ideas. But at the end of the day, there is only one measure for Best Practices and that is this: when I do it in my classroom, are my students engaged and learning? Because even if Mrs. Teachenheimer has great success with an approach, it may not work for me or with my students, because we are human beings in a classroom and not toasters on an assembly line.

Behind the Search for Best Practices is the ongoing belief that if we could just identify some fool-proof, awesome teaching techniques, we could just pack those in a box and and any sentient life-form that unpacked the box and used those Best Practices would be an awesome teacher. This is a profound misunderstanding of what teaching is an how it works.

Are there practices more likely to be useful than others? Sure. If we're giving general marriage advice, there are some mostly-universal truisms that can be widely applied (Don't be abusive to your spouse every day. Occasionally speak to each other.) but the more specific the advice, the more limited its use (Every morning at 6:05, say "I love you, Brenda.")

So is it useful to have someone offering Best Practices out there? Probably, as long as we understand that what's Best is one classroom may be much less Best in another. Is it useful to have the federal government trying to push these practices? No, not at all. Given the choice between looking for teaching ideas on WWC or on any of the major teacher sharing websites, I will pick the latter every time. And as Kalenze correctly observes, the ESSA requirement is a nothing-burger, a demand for more paperwork so that federal bureaucrats can pat themselves on the back and say, "Look how we made education better! The proof is right here in all these forms! Yay us!" As always, any policy based on the assumption that the federal government has a better idea of what is happening in my classroom than I do is a dopey policy.

Kalenze's concern-- that some of the policies passed around virally by administrators like, say, implementing a whole bunch of unproven tech because computers-- is a valid one. He doesn't address one of the main sources of bad practices-- corporate sales. The people in the education field who are working hardest to push particular practices are the people making money from those practices. Some of the worst abuses have happened when government decides to endorse a particular company's product as The Way To Go. In that perfect storm we get the company's desire to grab money laced with their own company-sponsored bad research and bolstered by friendly government officials picking winners by strongly suggesting particular programs. This process has gotten us everything from Accelerated Reader to the modern charter school movement.And I don't have to time here to rehearse the whole sad history of No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and Common Core, each symptomatic in its own sad way of the transformation of government into a corporate marketing department.

If we really want to talk about how best practices are being blocked out of the classroom by other baloney, we should talk about corporate marketing and its role in education. The danger in ESSA is not that it fails to properly push or enforce the choice of Best Practices-- the real danger is that someone in government will try to "clarify" or "strengthen" that aspect by offering specific "recommendations" of which practices the feds judge to be best.

Write Your Own PISA Post

I actually considered a Reaction to PISA Scores post and then decided that I didn't have the heart for this annual exercise in futility, and wiser heads than mine were already on the case. So instead, I'll let you take this little quiz (in, of course, multiple choice form) and in the process create a Choose Your Own Madlibs Fake Journalism story for the occasion. Enjoy!

       






International Testing Authorities today released the highly anticipated PISA scores. PISA stands for
           a) Programme for International Student Assessment
           b) Program for International Student Assessment
           c) Probably Isn't Scaring Anyone
           d) Problems In Silly Accounting

The scores indicate that American students have improved their international standings in
          a) math
          b) reading
          c) nothing
          d) making multiple choice decisions

But in the meantime, there has been a drop in US standing when it comes to
          a) math
          b) reading
          c) making a decent bagel
          d) bureaucratic thumb twiddling over random scores

Some educational experts have declared that the new battery of scores is a sign of
          a) something wrong with the damn teachers
          b) shift in the tides
          c) the apocalypse, due any day now since 1983
          d) everything except a failure in the test-and-punish, standards-based reforms of the last decade

On the other hand, other educational experts declared that the scores as a sign of
         a) the opposite of whatever those other guys said
         b) the awesome success of reform programs
         c) the rest of the world getting dumber
         d) America is great again already

All experts agreed that the PISA results show proof
         a) of whatever viewpoint I'm already invested in
         b) my opponents are dum-dum doody heads
         c) USA! USA! USA! USA!
         d) I'm rubber and you're glue

Further examination of the results and interpretations of them show that
        a) innumeracy is a problem among education writers
        b) lots of folks don't understand how stack ranking works
        c) writing about boring data is hard
        d) measuring the educational attainment of entire nation's is mostly impossible

The PISA is an international test that serves to measure educational achievement in nations that don't even speak the same languages. Its validity and accuracy has been established by
          a) the organization that created it
          b) tiny invisible accountants
          c) hopes and dreams
          d) insisting real hard repeatedly

Somwhere, a handful of education historians are repeatedly trying to remind us
          a) the US has always ranked low on these international tests
          b) the US has always ranked low on these international tests
          c) the US has always ranked low on these international tests
          d) the US has always ranked low on these international tests

In the weeks ahead, education thought leaders and policy wonks will, in response to these scores
          a) beat their PR horse to death
          b) make no meaningful policy recommendations or decisions
          c) move on to the next shiny object
          d) all of the above

The best headline pun for this article would include
         a) anything with Tower of Pisa
         b) malPISAnce
         c) PISA'n me off
         d) The Princess and the PISA

Kindergrinder Toxicity

The LA Times last week ran this story aimed directly at the feels. It's the tragic cautionary tale of a poor little five year old who arrived at kindergarten only to discover that she was already behind.

At a kindergarten screening two months before her first day, she happily chattered about her dog Toodles, her favorite color pink, her Santa Claus pajamas, her nickname Gigi, her outings with dad to see SpongeBob SquarePants movies.

But many of her 21 classmates already knew most of the alphabet, colors and shapes. Two of them could even read all 100 words — at, the, there, like — that kindergartners are expected to know by the end of the year.

The story is centered around the Great Suspenseful Question-- can Gigi, who never went to pre-school and was not read to daily, ever hope to catch up?

Teresa Watanabe chronicles the tale, duly noting without question that Gigi is facing what used to be first grade work, a situation created by the Common Core. Gigi also had the great good fortune to be enrolled at Telesis Academy of Science and Math in West Covina, a school that proudly bills itself as the "first ever No Excuses Prep Academy in the nation." You'll be happy to know that thanks to a loving teacher and hard working family, Gigi's academic career was snatched from the jaws of disaster.

The whole story is immensely depressing. The major sin of Gigi's parents is that they wanted to have a childhood, one that apparently included lots of travel and outdoorsiness and familial time. Little did they realize that while they were showering their little four year old with love and attention, they should have been prepping her for the rigors of kindergarten. I mean, I am a huge supporter of reading to your child every day, but of all the reasons to do it, "Get my child ready for rigorous academic kindergarten" does not rank high.

Is there any reason to believe that getting littles jammed full of more academics sooner actually pays off further down the road? The story doesn't address that question, nor does Watanabe consider the issue of how widely Littles differ in developmental speed-- after all, what does it mean for a five year old to "catch up"? Catch up to what? Who sets the mark that she's supposed to hit and is it reasonable to expect her to hit it if she's lived six months fewer than a peer?

I read about her mother's guilt and Gigi's own fears of failure and being wrong or different, and it just makes me sad. This story is a reminder that the transformation of kindergarten into a kindergrinder isn't just about unfounded academic practices, but taking vulnerable young children and parents and making them doubt everything about their family lives even as it teaches them to think of learning and school as something to be feared, something to be approached with dread and caution instead of embraced with joy. The toxic nature of kindergrinding isn't confined to the school building, but spills out into the community-- and all without real evidence to prove that all of these sacrifices are worth it.

I love reading. I loved sharing it with my children growing up. I loved the moments when grew into their own love of it and pushed forward to learn all about how to do it-- in their own time. But not like this. Books are for children to stand on in triumph and excitement, nor for them to be crushed under.

How Charter Students Would Benefit from Teacher Unions

As part of the general "Please don't leave us" hubbub arising from the nominally-Democratic-neo-liberal fear that a bunch of Trump-hating lefties are about to bolt out of the reformster tent, Peter Cunningham over at Education Post ran a big discussion about how unions and charters should maybe be BFFs (you can read my take on the discussion here, here and here).

Arguments included that unions would be great if they didn't act like unions, charters would start implementing policies they've always avoided like the plague, unions would make charters look better, and it would be innovative, somehow. But these all involved supposed benefits for the unions and charter operators. Can the marriage of unions and charters be a happy one?  Later on twitter, Cunningham tweaked the focus--

Would there be a benefit to charter students if charters welcomed a teachers union? Would this be the kind of marriage that would benefit the children, even if it's a little rocky?

Benefits for the Kids

Well, actually he used the term "student achievement" which is a euphemism for "standardized test scores." If the question is "Would having a teachers union raise student scores on the Big Standardized Test," I have three responses.

1) We already know that there is a positive relationship between unions and test scores. We've known this for a while. It's a fuzzy correlation-causation connection, but we've done the research and while it may say a number of things, it clearly does not say that the getting rid of unions gets you better test scores.

2) If we really want to raise test scores, we don't need a teachers union. We don't need teachers. We can just stop spending any time at all on anything that isn't on the test, strap students to computer drill-and-kill programs, and test scores will be awesome.

3) Who cares? Big Standardized Test scores remain a terrible proxy for student achievement. Find me more than a handful of parents who say, "Look, I don't care what else happens with my child in school as long as she gets a really good standardized test score." Or find me an adult who says, "I came from such a rough background, but that high score on the PARCC just opened up all kinds of doors for me."

So I'm going to answer the question that Cunningham almost asked-- how would a teachers union benefit students at a charter school?

First, let me unpack my own biases. My feelings about my union on the state and national level are hugely mixed. I have been a local union president, and I have been a union critic. You will never ever see me jump on a bandwagon just because the union is conducting; they have gotten so many things so spectacularly wrong (guess we can put that chair at Hillary's table in the attic next to the box of Common Core love notes) and they do sometimes have interests in mind that don't match local concerns. On the other hand, anyone who believes that  unions are unnecessary because you can just count on management to do the right thing out of the goodness of their heart-- that person deserves every bit of nothing that management is going to give him.

And we're going to maintain focus here. There are any number of moral and ethical arguments that can be deployed in union-management discussion, and there are many ways in which charter operation would benefit from a teacher union, but we are going to focus on just one thing--


How would a teachers union benefit charter school students? Would it be a good idea to put this marriage together for the children's sake?

Students would have adult advocates in the building. Having a union means teachers have job protections, which means that teachers can stick their necks out for the students. There are plenty of stories of charter teachers who tried to stand up for students, or even offer educational enrichment, and they were summarily fired. We don't know how many teachers have said, "I'd love to help ya, kid, but it would mean my job" or just turned a scared, blind eye, but I feel dead certain that there are more than a few. Students need the security of knowing that there are adults in the school who can stand up for them, and they certainly don't need the guilt of thinking that Mr. McGuts lost his job over them.

Students would be more certain to have trained, experienced teachers. With a union, teachers may be more inclined to stick around, giving the students a sense of stability as they work with a staff that has had time to grow into that particular school community. A union could also help insure that students will have teachers who have some sort of actual education training.

Students would have teachers' full attention. A unionized school is more likely to have decent pay and hours for their teachers, reducing the number of times that little Chris is going to hear, "I haven't graded your tests yet because my shift at Piggly Wiggly ran long last night."

Students would work with fully-functioning adults with real lives. Part of a teacher's job is to model the life of a fully-functioning adult. As with the previous point, his is easier to pull off by people whose union has put actual limits on their workload, hours and pay. I know some charter managers hate the idea of anyone telling them when and where and how and how many hours their teachers can work, but here's the thing-- if nobody ever drew a line, all teachers would work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and it still wouldn't be enough. A teacher who is exhausted is not the best teacher. A teacher who never climbs out of the teaching bubble to see the rest of the world is not the best teacher. You cannot prepare students to take their place in a world you've never seen.

Students would have a broader, richer experience. Teachers who have job protections can also take chances in the classroom, giving students an opportunity to have the greater variety, creativity and experimentation that charters are supposed to be known for, instead of the cookie-cutter top-down proscribed curriculum that is too common. Teachers with job protection can stand up to a "visionary" charter leader to explain why his vision is wrong, bad, or just plain not working. Beyond that, union teachers have ready access to a network of fellow professionals who can help with pedagogical puzzles; if they're stuck on a lesson, they have people to consult besides Dr. Google.

Students would have a safer, more nurturing, more stable environment. A union provides a clear open method of communicating with school management. That means that issues noticed and raised by students or classroom teachers can be quickly brought to the attention of the right people. Physical hazards or failing procedures don't go unaddressed because nobody knows who to tell or how to tell them. This is also one of the benefits of a stable workforce; when you burn and churn staff every year then you never build an institutional memory and nobody really knows How We Take Care of X Around Here. A union can facilitate connectivity within a school, both by providing a network for in-house communication and also by holding onto staff with work conditions and job security. Put another way, it is not helpful for an eight-year-old to realize that she knows more about how her school works than her teacher does. Charters often market themselves as a safer alternative-- a union could help charter operators make that PR pitch actually true.

To the contrarians--

The immediate response to some or all of these points will be, "I can name a bunch of public schools with teachers unions that suck in some or all of these aspects." You probably can. Those would be mis-managed schools where administration doesn't know how to properly work with the union. Some married people make each other miserable and then get divorced; this does not mean that marriage is a terrible idea, only that some people are not very good at it.

The real problem here

As I've noted elsewhere, the central irony here is that even though I'm arguing for a union presence, there's virtually nothing on this list that couldn't be accomplished by good school management and without any union at all-- if the school operators wanted to do it.

But mostly they don't. The whole point of the modern charter movement is to set up schools where the People In Charge don't have to answer to anyone else and most definitely don't have to deal with a bunch of uppity employees who don't know their place. The movement is also about the Bottom Line, the deliverables, the metrics, and right now, the only metric anyone has is the stupid BS Test scores. Some reformsters are going to look at my list and say, "Yeah, that's very nice, but I can't measure any of this, and so I can manage it or pitch it or grow it. It's not actionable data. It's not a deliverable."

Let me say with absolute, heartfelt sincerity that if this is your thinking and your approach to education, you should go do something else, because you have absolutely no business working in education.

But if you're going to insist on sticking around, let me point out that deliverables and test scores are not what growing young humans is about, and you already know that. You don't measure your own child in with data and deliverables-- you look to see if your child is happy, healthy, excited, and learning stuff as measured by her ability to talk about that stuff. Charters know it, too-- that's why a cyber-charter in PA spent an entire year pitching the idea that dropping out of public school to cyber-educate would make the child happier.

If a charter operator dismisses all of the above benefits as unimportant because they aren't on the test, or not nearly as valuable as management autonomy and the power to be a Tiny God in your personal school system, then of course none of this is going to happen. But if your position is, "Look, I just want to run a school the way I think it should run, make some money from it, and generate enough data points to look like it's working," then we're working toward entirely different goals, and this marriage between a teachers union and your charter school is never going to work. A teachers union would bring a world of benefits to students in any school, but that only matters if benefiting students is your primary concern. Unions are often accused of putting adult concerns ahead of student concerns, but I can't think of anything that more typifies that problem than an adult sitting in his big office declaring, "This school is going to run the way I say it's going to run, and nobody is going to tell me differently."