Active Shooter

So today we had early dismissal so that we could spend the afternoon running active shooter drills.

Loads of local law enforcement and other agencies participated in the drill. We had fifty-ish hand picked students to play the part of student victims. We had several previous PDs to go over how to handle ourselves. And we had two live "bad guys" with blank-firing guns to make it all nice and realistic.

We ran four drills. Because my room is far off in one wing of the building, I missed most of the excitement. I did not even hear the gunfire or the screams, and would not have known what was happening had the office not provided announcements (as part of the drill) like "Shots fired in the science wing." That was for three of the drills.

We were not of course told what simulations would be run. I don't know if it would have helped. Probably not. But Scenario #3 turned out to be a lunch shift. My lunch shift.

The shooters prepped the students and put them at ease. Selected some to stand against the wall and be shot dead, a couple of others to be wounded. Administrators, observers, local press stood along the walls to watch.

My usual post is on the wall with the entrance doors. The shooter fired first outside, in the hall. The shots were loud-- we knew they were coming and the students still shrieked in surprise and alarm. The shooter entered and began. My colleagues at the other end yelled for the students to go toward them, to get out. I had to walk the length of the cafeteria to get to an exit, the shooter to my right, executing the four pre-selected victims. Students dove under tables, huddled against the wall. I waved them up, toward the exit. We go out, went around the building to the safe zone.

I don't know if I saw all the students. I don't know if I got them all out. I'm pretty sure I didn't, and even with preparation and the fact that it wasn't real, the choice between shooing them out and lagging back to make sure they were all up and moving while the gun was still shooting- BAM BAM BAM BAM-- was a little bit beyond my processing powers in that moment.

I won't lie. I was shaken. I'm still shaken. We debriefed at the end of the day and the law enforcement folks said we did well. Maybe that's true. All I know is that tonight instead of thinking through how to cover the reading in my classes tomorrow, I'm replaying and wondering how many pretend students I got pretend killed today. Maybe I would do better if the real thing happened, having been through this training. But right now, having this business take up space in my head is, well, troubling.

Is this part of the job now? I suppose it is. Maybe it is. This is certainly not the first occasion to think about it. It's been over a decade since a shooter went to a prom less than an hour away from here. But damn-- all the things you do to get better at the work, at your craft, and then this on top of all that. And now it's not just did I get that concept across, did I reach that student, did I get that planning done, but also, did I get any students killed today. I absolutely cannot imagine how teachers go through the real thing ever deal. I want to find every one of them and give them a huge hug.

I'm springy. I'm resilient and stubborn. I write what bothers me out of my system. I'll be fine tomorrow. But I'm not fine tonight.

PA: More Bad School Evaluation

For a while, here in PA we've been rating schools with the SPP (school performance profile)  for a few years. It's a fun little batch of number shuffling that pretends to be a broad method of scoring school performance that is actually 90% Big Standardized Test scores. It has been spectacularly non-useful (except that it has provided some teachers of a certain age with whom I work to invoke the Naughty by Nature classic hit).

But now the PA Department of Ed has a New!! Improved!! version of SPP. They have had thirty (count 'em, thirty) "feedback sessions" and they are ready to unveil the Future Ready PA Index.

The FRPI (which does not invoke any great old hits by anyone, but sounds kind of like the air being squeezed out of a balloon) is a "more holistic view of school performance," even as it retains some features of SPP. This is a neat feat because SPP didn't have very many features-- mostly just the "let's use these BS Test scores" feature. But here are some of the cool new holistic things happening.


Emphasizing the weighting of value-added measures, which incentivizes a focus on all learners and is less sensitive to demographic variables.

Great. Doubling down on the VAM measure (in PA we like PVAAS) that uses gobbledeegook math formulas to turn BS Test scores into baloney-filled teacher evaluation scores. 

Measuring English language acquisition among ESL students, not simply performance on a test of grade level ELA standards. 

It is not immediately clear what, exactly, this would mean, but it seems to mean adding a growth measure to the managing of ESL student BS Test scores. In addition to this tweak, third grade reading and seventh grade math scores would be used to compute on-track growthiness. Also, we'll throw in attendance as an on-track indicator.

And we'll check to see if you're closing the achievement gap, which should be easy because all you have to do is get a kid who runs a ten minute mile to run across the finish line at the same time as one who runs a four-minute mile. It also means we get to berate classroom teachers for failing to get their students to move faster than the leaders of the pack, rather than berating officials who fail to provide those teachers with the resources needed to perform this miracle.

Incentivizing career awareness instruction beginning at the elementary level. 

As with many states, Pennsylvania is finding that school evaluation is a great tool for taking control of local school system curriculum and programming. While both bribes and extortion work here, the FRPI seems to lean toward bribes. Implement these programs that we like, and we'll rate you higher. Now, is elementary school career awareness a bad thing? Not necessarily. But it's all in the execution, and as reformster Rick Hess is fond of pointing out, you can force a school to do something, but you can't force the school to do it well.

But under this plan, eighth graders can earn their school valuable bonus points by developing a personal plan for their career. I'm wondering if the bureaucrats involved have met many eighth graders.

Addressing the issue of unequal weighting of content areas in the current SPP. 

Well, yeah. When your whole school evaluation is based on math and reading scores, that tends to put huge emphasis on math and reading scores. It's not clear what "addressing" means exactly, as it can be anything from saying "Hey, that's a thing" while doing nothing, to subjecting other content areas to the kind of crappy micro-management-by-test that we math and English types have been enjoying. But the more detailed "webinar" doesn't address the specifics of this, which suggests we're going to go the lip service route. 

Increasing the weighting of rigorous course offerings such as AP, IB, and dual enrollment. 

This remains one of the genius features of reform. Imagine if your school could get a better rating if all teachers drove Fords. The companies that have convinced government to incentivize buying their particular product, whether it's the AP test or a college course-- well, hats off to those folks. When yu can get the government to do your marketing for you, life is good. Well, good for everyone except schools that are implementing programs that don't actually do anybody any good.

Allowing LEAs to include locally-selected reading assessments (grade 3) and math assessments (grade 7) as additional snapshots of student progress. 

This could actually be.... not bad. Yes, it's another door opened for vendors to make a buck, but it does provide local districts with a little flexibility.

Awarding extra credit to schools graduating students with at least one high-value, industry- recognized credential.

Get your welding certificate. Also the school can get credit for students who graduate and then join the armed forces, go to college, or get a job. And they have sixteen months to do it. Who is going to track this, anyway? This seems like a swell idea, but it also encourages the school to sort students into two groups-- students who will probably help us, and students who will probably hurt us. This approach serves students in the latter group poorly.


This is all supposed to launch in fall of 2018, but then, it's also supposed to dovetail nicely with the new rules under ESSA and we suddenly have no idea what the hell those rules might be. I mean, seriously, no idea at all. Schools may be required to teach Russian or scrap IDEA or send all their students to a private school where nobody cares what is taught (or not). Literally anything could happen. I expect a lot of bureaucrats in Harrisburg are waiting to see just how uch smoke their work is going to go up in.

You can get the more detailed explanation in a youtube webinar (which more closely resembles a power-point presentation rendered as a video). You could contemplate that, or you could just stroll down memory lane with this:

Goldman Sachs Backs Bad Reform

For whatever reason, a video from your friends at Goldman Sachs has been circulating again. First floated out into the interether last June, it highlights "three ways technology will transform the classroom" (and therefor you should invest in this stuff and make a bunch of money).

Our host is Victor Hu. With a JD from Harvard law and an MBA from the Wharton School, Hu is well set to spend over a decade at Goldman Sachs, much of it as "global head of Education Technology and Services Investment Banking, advising, financing and investing in education and knowledge services companies globally." So understand-- this two minute prospectus is not sub-textually "Boy, this is going to make education awesome' but "Boy, this is going to move a lot of merchandise and generate a ton of revenue for somebody."

So what are the three ways that technology will transform the classroom. Well, you may have heard some of this before...

One: Personalized Learning

We all have different learning styles-- nobody is average! Woohoo! "Through technology, we now have the potential to meet learners where they are." Also, through technology, I now have the potential to make a million dollars blogging. Also, my scalp has the potential to grow hair again and my stomach has the potential to be flat again.

Content will no longer have to be presented in a "monolithic or linear format," and also, students will no longer have to take notes with quill pens or come to school on horseback. Glad we now have the potential to solve all those problems. Now content can be "modulized" and presented to the learner on a computer screen at the right time at the right level of difficulty. Because magic.

Two: Data and Analytics

We can use data to measure student competency as well as engagement, and teachers can figure out much earlier that students get bored doing stupid computerized worksheets-- oops! Sorry. I wandered off there. Actually, teachers will figure out a lot sooner when learners are struggling? Really? Do you already know how soon I can tell who's struggling? Because I can often tell that my learners are struggling roughly two seconds after we've started it. Do data analytics include some sort of time machine component?

Anyway, by using "early intervention" teachers will be able to deal with issues surrounding "student potential." Because teachers weren't already doing that.

Three: Competency Based Learning

This one is "exciting." We start with some stock footage of classrooms of earlier days while Hu explains that we've always had a factory model where students have to be in seats for a certain amount of time, and now we have the exciting prospect of replacing that with a factory model that requires students to check off a list of required tasks. Seriously-- there are a lot of things you can reasonably say about CBE, but "not a factory model" is not one of them. CBE reduces education to an assembly line of tasks to be performed by the students. CBE breaks down complex learning into a list of simple tricks to perform in the same way that McDonald's breaks being a gourmet chef into a list of simple tasks to be performed to create a Happy Meal.

Hu says that a competency based model means that people can take as long as they need to learn something, which he says means that nobody gets left behind, which is crazy talk because it means the exact opposite. If I'm driving to Cleveland in a car and you're following, but you decide you want to stop and watch the flowers grow and maybe ride a bicycle for part of the trip and take all the time you need, you will be left behind. I mean, I think the idea of moving at your own speed and arriving in your time is an admirable approach, but it absolutely means that you will be left behind by people who take less time to accomplish the same goals.

Big Finish

Now that we have technology, people can be life long learners. You may remember the touching stories of Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, who often sat in Independence Hall, dejected and downhearted. "Dammit, Tom," Franklin would say. "If only we had computers, I wouldn't have had to stop learning things when I was sixteen. Someday, someone will invent technology that will let people keep learning long after the graduate from high school. But until then, we're all stuck. Want to go pick up some hot colonial babes?"

This is the kind of baloney that is used to sell investments to people with money, and if it makes little educational sense, that's because the real audience is Amateurs With Money. That remains one of the scourges of the modern reformster movement, all the way back to David Coleman, education amateur, pitching Common Core to Bill Gates, an incredibly wealthy education amateur-- people who want to sell a product not to the actual users of that product, but to the investors.

This is where Goldman Sachs thinks the big money is coming, and that paradoxically attracts big money, which is why these three not very impressive ideas continue to be a threat to the promise of public education.

DeVos: We're Not Done Yet

The HELP committee approved her, and then two members of that committee who voted "yes" to send her on to the full Senate indicated that they would vote No to her appointment to the USED Secretary post.

So. We're not done yet.

Contact your Senator. If you know they're voting against DeVos, thank them and let them know that you support their choice (because you can be sure they're getting pressure from Important People who think they should change their minds). If you know they're voting for DeVos, keep the pressure on anyway. Let them know that there is a price they're paying for that support. Make them know that the vote is costing them something.

And if you're not sure, contact them anyway. Often. By phone. By fax. Repeatedly.

Congressmen and their staffs are reporting that they've never taken such an electronic hammering. The numbers being reported are staggering-- five figures, six figures.

She may still be approved, but we have already won a victory. We have already made the Trump administration pay a price, made them use some of their juice to make this happen. The roar of opposition has jarred loose many of the people who have been anti-DeVos silently. Good lord-- Eli Broad, charter booster and reformster extraordinaire, came out against DeVos today. If DeVos takes the office, she and Trump and the GOP Senators who put her there will know, despite their bluster, that we are paying attention, watching, looking over their collective shoulders.

A DeVos defeat would be extraordinary, virtually unprecedented. And it could still happen.

So here's the link to FaxZero, the suddenly-famous service that will send up to five free faxes a day without any need for a sign-up or an account-- and they already have Senate fax numbers programmed in and ready to go. And here's the link for emails and phone numbers.

The vote is now expected as early as Friday morning, so send something tonight before you got to bed, tomorrow before you go to work, and any other spare minute you have during the day. If they are going to foist this unqualified menace on us, make them feel like they are climbing up a steep hill in a heavy hailstorm to do it.

Maybe-- just maybe-- we can make some history. But there is no doubt that we can make some noise while we make ourselves felt in Washington. 

PA: Gutting Teacher Sick Leave

In Pennsylvania, while folks were busy working to head off the appointment of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, the State Senate's education committee was passing a bill to strip sick and bereavement leave from teachers (as well as sabbatical leave).

SB 229 is a re-introduction of SB 584 from the previous session. It would end the state requirement for a minimum number of sick and bereavement days to be given to each teacher. All such days would become subject to local contract negotiation, which means a local district could provide down to and including zero sick days or zero bereavement days or neither or both. The requirement to allow sabbaticals would be stricken entirely.

The bill won approval of the committee by a 7-5 vote on Tuesday. 

The sponsor of the bill is Senator John H. Eichelberger, an insurance broker who represents-- well, the only way to explain his district is to show the map.

That's our Senate District 30.

Ain't no gerrymander like a Pennsylvania gerrymander

Eichelberger is a Republican upstart who was swept into office on the wave of voter anger over the infamous late-night pay raise of 2005. He was supported by an assortment of conservatives including Pat Toomey.

GOP legislators propose the bill in order to push fairness and flexibility.

See, the flexibility would allow-- well, there's only one sort of flexibility that could be involved, because districts can already negotiate or simply give sick and bereavement days over and above those required by the state. So the only flexibility we could really be talking about is the flexibility to give teachers fewer sick days and/or fewer bereavement days. Because if there's one problem we have in schools, it's teachers who have too many dead relatives and who spend too much time feeling sad about it. Just toss Grandma in the ground after supper and get back to school the next day. Be less sick.

Sen. John DiSanto, R-Dauphin County, thinks this is a benefit for teachers. "It gives them the opportunity to negotiate these costs ... and allow for benefits that are more meaningful in other areas." Which again can only mean giving up sick days in order to get something else. Want better health care or more pay? Then negotiate away your ability to get sick or grieve a family member. Yes, the flexibility to get less is clearly a benefit for teachers.

But Eichelberger also sees a fairness issue. And by "fairness," he means that old favorite argument-- somebody else doesn't get this so teachers shouldn't, either. This is part of the great American Worker Race to the Bottom in which all non-wealthy folks are supposed to be losing and teachers are supposed to be leading the pack.  And the only flexibility that matters is the flexibility of employers to provide employees with less and less and less.

No, call it what you like-- this is a move to strip teachers of sick and bereavement leave. Oh, yeah-- and no more sabbaticals, ever.

Meanwhile, throughout the US, legislators remained too busy praising the importance of family and The Children to do anything about our standing as the country with literally the worst maternity leave policies in the world. 

What About Rural Charters

In a recent panel discussion, Nine Rees, the head honcho of the National Alliance of Public [sic] Charter Schools observed that "It is actually quite hard to expand charter schools in a lot of rural communities because there's no political base of support for those kinds of changes." And then she was on to other stuff (I'm working my way through that video and will have commentary on the whole thing some day, soon).

But I think that's a statement worth examining, both because I'm in a small town/rural community, and because that lack of a rural political base tells us something about the problems of the modern charter movement.

Part of the rural charter problem isn't political support at all-- it's market. My district, for example, has roughly 150 students per grade level, which means that there's not a lot of market here to tap. A charter would have to really hustle to round up enough students to make business sense, and certainly compared to a customer-rich urban environment it's a tough challenge. On top of that, those few students are spread out geographically, and while the "Getting the kid to school is the parents' problem" may fly in urban districts, out here, folks expect schools to provide transportation. Want to figure out the costs of sending a school bus an extra thirty miles every day to pick up one kid? Why try to set up your ice cream stand at a remote Antarctic outpost when you can set it up on a busy street corner in Miami?

But there's also a lack of political support because of the money.

A big urban district is swimming in so much money that we can shuffle some around and it may not be super-obvious how much money was lost when a charter opened. It's significant, and it's damaging, but it's also hard for the average citizen to notice or track.

But in rural areas, money is already stretched tight, and while a loss of a half million dollars is a minor inconvenience in big districts, in a small rural district it can be crippling.

We do have one kind of charter in rural areas of PA-- cyber-charters. And they are hurting us. A few dozen students gone to cybers don't make the slightest difference in district expenses, but they cost the district a half-million dollars and that has translated into program cuts and closed buildings (there is also an impact in PA from the mismanagement of the pension fund). It is not hard for even the least attentive taxpayer to follow this conversation:

Taxpayer: Why did you close our elementary school?

School board: We needed to save a half a million dollars. Also, in other news, this year we had to pay half a million dollars out to cyber schools.

Charter schools hurt public schools. Charter schools drain resources from public schools, resources that they need to maintain their current level of service. In big busy setting, with lots of numbers and schools and students flying about, it's possible to generate enough smoke and mirrors to obscure that simple fact, but in a rural area, it is not.

Granted, it doesn't have to be true. States could choose to say to taxpayers, "We can have charter schools, but we'll have to raise school taxes to pay for them." So far, no politician seems interested in making that pitch.

There are other reasons that rural areas are not ripe charter markets. For instance, rural schools identify pretty strongly with their communities. Pennsylvania is a prime example. We have about 500 school districts which is, honestly, nuts. There should be fewer. But every time anyone starts a conversation about merging districts, there is a prodigious amount of noise about community and heritage and tradition and why students don't want to stop being a Humbletown Husky in order to become a Vistaville Viking.

Nor do I see taxpayers wanting to trade a school board run by neighbors that you see in the store, talk to at church, yell at at a public board meeting, or just call on the phone with whatever is bugging you about the schools-- well, who would wants to trade that for a board of strangers that meet in secret in some other city?

There is no mystery in why charters have not been driven to pursue rural markets, and there's no mystery in why rural communities lack the political motivation to pursue modern charter businesses. But it's important to remember that there isn't anything wrong with rural charters that isn't also wrong with charters in every other location.

Beyond Tuesday

It's late Monday night. I've finished firing off today's set of e-mails and vented some general internet outrage (because, you know, a well-turned tweet from a small town English teacher is totally going to shift the American conversation). And I think I'm settled for tomorrow.

Look, sooner or later one of two things is going to happen. Betsy DeVos is going to be confirmed as Secretary of Education, or she's not. One of those is far more likely than the other, but in both cases, we need to be prepared for what comes next.

The far-less-likely possibility is that she will be defeated and rejected, and that will be a good thing, but if it happens, the next thing that will happen is that Herr Trump will nominate someone else, and that person will be terrible. It might seem like an improvement because it may just be garden variety terrible and not burn-down-the-world terrible. But any education nominee out of this administration is going to be terrible. But still-- remember that Eva Moskowitz and She Who Will Not Be Named (former DC chancellor) were both reportedly considered, and both would suck hugely.

So if far-less-likely option occurs, we are going to have one more terrible Secretary of Education. We will have to do some loin girding and battening of hatches, and we will have to get back to the business of teaching in the storm, dancing into the apocalypse.

The far-more-likely possibility is that she will be confirmed. It is possible that some set of GOP senators will blink, but in case you haven't noticed, DC is not exactly awash in bold vertebrate behavior right now.

If DeVos is confirmed, you're going to hear a lot about how this was a big defeat for teachers and Democrats, a big victory for the Trumpsters. "tsk tsk," they'll say. Or maybe "Neener neener." Followed by, "Look at all the money and effort they wasted."

Do not believe it. The people who say that will be wrong.

Speaking up for what is right, speaking up for what you value, speaking up for the institutions that helped make this country great-- those actions are never wasted.

It is brutish, short-term foolishness to believe that effort is only well-spent when you get your way. It is a position of moral and ethical emptiness to assert that the only efforts and expressions that matter are those that end in victory. "If I don't get my way, then all my work was wasted," is the reasoning of a five-year-old.

You stand up and speak for what is right because that's what a functioning moral being does. You stand up for the people and choices and values and country that you value because to not do so is moral cowardice, spiritual and intellectual laziness.

It is, in fact, childish in the extreme to believe that every time you speak your truth, the world must stop and reorganize itself to revolve around it. But if you don't speak your truth, nobody can hear it. If you don't stand for something, nobody can stand up with you.

The whole business is much like teaching itself. Every day in the classroom we make choices about what to say, what to do, how to interact with students. Some of what we do will vanish into the depths of time without leaving a trace on a single brain or heart. Some of what we do will absolutely alter the trajectory of some student. If you have taught for more than a decade, you have had the experience of talking to an old student who shares something you did that was absolutely life-altering for them-- and you have no memory of it at all.

Point is, going forward, you never know which choices will be earth-shattering and which will simply vanish into the dusts of time. So you have to make each choice the best you can, choosing as if each choice is one that will change someone's world. You make the best choices you can because that's how you become the best person you can be. The alternative is to live like some kind of morally stunted troll who tries to say or do whatever will make them feel as if they've won, no matter what that victory costs in integrity and decency. You can win with that approach-- hell, you can apparently become President-- but you will live as a hollow, empty, shitty human being who walked past a million chances to do something right and ignored them all.

So you stand up for what is right because there is value in being the kind of person who stands up for what is right, whether you win the day or not.

No matter what happens next, the effort to oppose DeVos (and all the other acts of resistance that are going on in the cavalcade of giant whalloping wrongness parading out of DC) will not be a waste. It won't be a defeat, either, because as we've been learning anew over the past decade, you never cross the finish line for Important Stuff. The work of defending the promise of public education is a marathon, not a sprint, and there is no finish line.

This has, in fact, been a big surprise to the Trumpkins, who seemed certain that once they won, all their opponents would just shut up and go away and let them blunder on in peace. But no-- we're all still here.

There is no ultimate victory, and there is no final defeat. Not as long as you stand back up.

And we will still be here the days beyond Tuesday. This DeVos business is just a blip in the race; it may tell us what route the marathon will follow next, but it won't end the race, and when they look around, we'll be right there, and you can bet that regardless of who is out in front at the moment, the great galloping pack of us force them to think about how to take their next steps.

And here's one of the most important secrets of all-- standing up for what is right creates its own sort of vigor and strength, while standing up for a lie, for what is wrong, for what is shallow and self-serving is exhausting work. I don't say this lightly-- I have lived my life badly, and it was absolutely draining and toxic and burdensome. Trying to live well for what is right-- that takes years off your life, weight off your shoulders. Trust me on this one. It is our advantage in the long haul.

So grab a breath. Get a cool glass of water. Shake the dust off your shoes.

And most of all, remember that as large as all this seems to loom, the real work still goes on in teh classroom, with the young humans that are our charges, and for day after day after day they will present themselves to us and we will meet their needs to the best of our ability. We will stand up for them, for what they need, for who they are, for who they can become, and as we will stand for them through this lousy Secretary of Education just as we have through the lousy Secretaries of Education who came before them. We will stand up through injustice and inequity and neglect and ugly empty foolishness. We will stand in that classroom, and we will show them how it's done.

Beyond Tuesday there is a whole world of opportunity for us, a whole sprawling world of what can be and could be and should be, and we may not always fight our way through the obstacles in our path, but it's still all there, and the appointment of a bunch of government functionaries doesn't change that. I will step back into my classroom, and I will look at those faces, and I will feel better for having stood up, and then I will move forward on whatever path is laid out for me next.

This is neither the end or the beginning, and there is still a world of work to do out there beyond Tuesday. Stand up. Take heart. Breathe deep. Step forward. Here we go.