This coming Tuesday, the kids are back in our local schools. In the meantime, here's some Sunday reading for you. Remember pass along what speaks to you. Everyone can amplify voices.
Dear Teachers Who Teach My Black Child
More good practical advice for the white teacher of black children
Can We Talk about How Many White Women There Are in School
Yes, here I am linking to Education Post. But this is a thought-provoking article, even if you disagree.
Who Is the Ideal Teaching Candidate
You really should be reading Nancy Flanagan every week. But just in case you missed this week, here's a dead-on look at selecting teachers.
Educational Malpractice
John Warner checks out one more canned writing program. It's not good.
The Worst Argument for Charter Schools
Jersey Jazzman with another look at bad ways to cheer for charters
Why Aren't We Talking about This
Emily Talmadge started her teaching career in the New York charter scene, and she reminds us just how bad that is/
Back to School Once More
Mary Holden has some thoughts about how to hold on to teachers.
What Happened To All the Teachers
Jeff Bryant notes that this mystery has been cropping up again lately-- and it's really not a mystery at all.
Be Glad for Our Failure To Catch China in Education
From Psychology Today, a look at China's disastrous education system, and why we should be glad we've failed to imitate it.
The Biggest Difference Between Private, Charter and Public Schools Is Not Test Scores-- It's Marketing
Jack Schneider has a new book out about measuring school quality, and here's an excerpt.
Sunday, August 27, 2017
Saturday, August 26, 2017
Lessons in Local History
Warning: This is not so much one of my rants about education policy as it is a look at an actual piece of teaching that I use in my own classroom. It's an example of how to use the unique and specific materials at hand to create what I believe is a valuable piece of learning.
For a couple of decades now, I have assigned my 11th grade Honors English class a major paper focused on local history (lovingly named by generations of students "the research project from hell"). Originally they drew a set of years out of a hat. Nowadays I have them select their own topic.Their goal-- to create a written work of local history, based on primary research.
It was the primary source part I was initially after. I had tired of traditional shake and bake research projects in which we basically asked students to plagiarize while being sure to make it look as if they hadn't. And research from published books and articles skips one of the most important parts of research writing-- sifting through a large pile of details to decide what is important and what is not. In a traditional research project, students get their facts pre-selected and pre-attached to a pre-written thesis. I wanted to get past that.
To do that, I needed a topic for which primary sources, or at least unsifted source material, was readily available. My first thought was local history. We have a fairly rich local history, much of it linked to the beginnings of the oil industry. And I was already familiar with the resources available, because I had been wading through them for many years myself. I belong to a local traditional town band with the concerts in the park and the whole nine yards, and I worked on their history for decades, poring through old newspapers, interviews, documents, scraps, anything I could find, tracking the lives of hundreds of members as well as the community, other arts groups, and whatever seemed to me to fit. If the idea of reading several hundred pages of me talking about small town history and the history of town bands appeals to you, just follow this link. Bottom line-- I knew the territory I was sending them out to explore,and I had the contacts and connections to get them into the places they needed to go to explore it.
The process is long and involved. They pick partners in December, begin the work, and hand in a final product in May. There are orientation sessions at the room in the library where materials are stored, and I often take a few Saturdays to go down and open the room up for them. There are check-in dates along the way, because I learned very early that procrastinators could dig themselves into a hole too deep to escape. And lots of discussion along the way of how to do such a thing.
The results have not always been stellar, but I believe there are some real benefits.
* You don't find the answer-- you make it. This is a revelation and a struggle for many of them, who assume that for any question a teacher asks, there is one correct answer and their job is to retrieve it. No, I tell them, you are deciding what the answer, the main idea, is here. You are in control of the outcome of this project-- and only you.
* No borders. In the typical shake and bake project, the teacher tells students where they may not look and what they may not use (to avoid cheating or cutting corners or making things to easy). For this project, there are no restrictions. If you can think of a place or person to consult, do it.
* For follows function. How you organize your materials depends on what you want to say, and that's up to you, so the organization is yours to set, too. But make it make sense. Follow the ideas and stop looking for an answer key.
* Create something. If you have done this really well, I tell them, there will be a piece of knowledge in the world on paper that did not exist before. You will have created something new.
*Learn about your community. "This place is dumb and boring," is where we usually start, and it's true that nothing ever blew up real good here, but they can learn to understand real history on a human scale. At least a little. And anything that connects people to their own communities is a win.
And we have almost always published. I used to run off copies, punch holes, bind the whole mess together. Each student gets a copy, and there are copies in the school and city library. More recently, I've been using Amazon's Createspace (the link is at the bottom of every amazon page) which both creates a decent print copy, but lists it on amazon (so Mom and Grampa and the rest can order copies too). I buy copies for the students and libraries, and as the "author," I get them for under $5 each.
I won't pretend for a second that every project in every year has been a triumph, or that every project has been a work of eleventh-grade genius. But I think the project is valuable, and has mostly worked. It is certainly one of the things my students remember for years and years after they've left me.
Should every teacher run out and pilot this same project? No, no no no, nope. But the larger point I want to make is that when we focus on some worthwhile goals and pull out the skills and knowledge that we personally have, tap into our own expertise, we can come up with useful and unique learning projects. We can design things that we are passionate about, and that passion will infect (some of) our students.
Standards? Pshaw. I handle that like all good teachers do. I designed the project using my best professional judgment and a constant feedback loop that helps me tweak it each year. The standards alignment is just paperwork that can be filled out after the fact.
So as you approach this year, look for your own projects from hell, your own ideas that your expertise and passion can bring to life while taking your students out of the more ordinary assignments. Anyone can do it. My 12th grade AP teaching colleague finishes her year with Paradise Lost, a work she loves, culminating in a trial in which two sides argue in front of local attorneys whether or not Milton successfully justified the ways of God to man. I wouldn't touch that project with a ten-foot pole (can't get excited about Milton, don't have lawyerly expertise to tap), but it is not only highly anticipated by each year's class, but it draws a huge audience. Really. Milton.
The lesson for us is, actually, the same lesson I try to deliver to my students. The answers are not outside us, waiting for us to dig them up. They are inside us, waiting to be brought to life, to be created by us. Do something really cool this year (understanding that you may well make some terrible mistakes first time out, but that itself is a learning opportunity and next year it'll be better) and make your classroom a unique window on the world.
For a couple of decades now, I have assigned my 11th grade Honors English class a major paper focused on local history (lovingly named by generations of students "the research project from hell"). Originally they drew a set of years out of a hat. Nowadays I have them select their own topic.Their goal-- to create a written work of local history, based on primary research.
It was the primary source part I was initially after. I had tired of traditional shake and bake research projects in which we basically asked students to plagiarize while being sure to make it look as if they hadn't. And research from published books and articles skips one of the most important parts of research writing-- sifting through a large pile of details to decide what is important and what is not. In a traditional research project, students get their facts pre-selected and pre-attached to a pre-written thesis. I wanted to get past that.
To do that, I needed a topic for which primary sources, or at least unsifted source material, was readily available. My first thought was local history. We have a fairly rich local history, much of it linked to the beginnings of the oil industry. And I was already familiar with the resources available, because I had been wading through them for many years myself. I belong to a local traditional town band with the concerts in the park and the whole nine yards, and I worked on their history for decades, poring through old newspapers, interviews, documents, scraps, anything I could find, tracking the lives of hundreds of members as well as the community, other arts groups, and whatever seemed to me to fit. If the idea of reading several hundred pages of me talking about small town history and the history of town bands appeals to you, just follow this link. Bottom line-- I knew the territory I was sending them out to explore,and I had the contacts and connections to get them into the places they needed to go to explore it.
The process is long and involved. They pick partners in December, begin the work, and hand in a final product in May. There are orientation sessions at the room in the library where materials are stored, and I often take a few Saturdays to go down and open the room up for them. There are check-in dates along the way, because I learned very early that procrastinators could dig themselves into a hole too deep to escape. And lots of discussion along the way of how to do such a thing.
The results have not always been stellar, but I believe there are some real benefits.
* You don't find the answer-- you make it. This is a revelation and a struggle for many of them, who assume that for any question a teacher asks, there is one correct answer and their job is to retrieve it. No, I tell them, you are deciding what the answer, the main idea, is here. You are in control of the outcome of this project-- and only you.
* No borders. In the typical shake and bake project, the teacher tells students where they may not look and what they may not use (to avoid cheating or cutting corners or making things to easy). For this project, there are no restrictions. If you can think of a place or person to consult, do it.
* For follows function. How you organize your materials depends on what you want to say, and that's up to you, so the organization is yours to set, too. But make it make sense. Follow the ideas and stop looking for an answer key.
* Create something. If you have done this really well, I tell them, there will be a piece of knowledge in the world on paper that did not exist before. You will have created something new.
*Learn about your community. "This place is dumb and boring," is where we usually start, and it's true that nothing ever blew up real good here, but they can learn to understand real history on a human scale. At least a little. And anything that connects people to their own communities is a win.
And we have almost always published. I used to run off copies, punch holes, bind the whole mess together. Each student gets a copy, and there are copies in the school and city library. More recently, I've been using Amazon's Createspace (the link is at the bottom of every amazon page) which both creates a decent print copy, but lists it on amazon (so Mom and Grampa and the rest can order copies too). I buy copies for the students and libraries, and as the "author," I get them for under $5 each.
I won't pretend for a second that every project in every year has been a triumph, or that every project has been a work of eleventh-grade genius. But I think the project is valuable, and has mostly worked. It is certainly one of the things my students remember for years and years after they've left me.
Should every teacher run out and pilot this same project? No, no no no, nope. But the larger point I want to make is that when we focus on some worthwhile goals and pull out the skills and knowledge that we personally have, tap into our own expertise, we can come up with useful and unique learning projects. We can design things that we are passionate about, and that passion will infect (some of) our students.
Standards? Pshaw. I handle that like all good teachers do. I designed the project using my best professional judgment and a constant feedback loop that helps me tweak it each year. The standards alignment is just paperwork that can be filled out after the fact.
So as you approach this year, look for your own projects from hell, your own ideas that your expertise and passion can bring to life while taking your students out of the more ordinary assignments. Anyone can do it. My 12th grade AP teaching colleague finishes her year with Paradise Lost, a work she loves, culminating in a trial in which two sides argue in front of local attorneys whether or not Milton successfully justified the ways of God to man. I wouldn't touch that project with a ten-foot pole (can't get excited about Milton, don't have lawyerly expertise to tap), but it is not only highly anticipated by each year's class, but it draws a huge audience. Really. Milton.
The lesson for us is, actually, the same lesson I try to deliver to my students. The answers are not outside us, waiting for us to dig them up. They are inside us, waiting to be brought to life, to be created by us. Do something really cool this year (understanding that you may well make some terrible mistakes first time out, but that itself is a learning opportunity and next year it'll be better) and make your classroom a unique window on the world.
Friday, August 25, 2017
XQ's Full Media Blitz
Brace yourselves. It's time for a star-studded ed erformstravaganza.
Another wave of PR dropped yesterday, touting a four-network, celebrity-packed, media event, proudly trumpeted everywhere from Variety to USA Today. On September 8, a huge line-up (including Tom Hanks, Yo-Yo Ma, Samuel L. Jackson, Jennifer Hudson and (sorry) Common) will present "an hour-long live television special about reinventing American high schools."
EIF Presents: XQ Super School Live will be highlighting the efforts of the XQ Institute, simulcast on all four major broadcast networks. So who are these people, and how do they have this kind of firepower.
The XQ Institute is an offspring of the Emerson Collective, a Palo Alto-based do-gooding group founded by Laurene Powell Jobs. The organization is dedicated to removing barriers to opportunity so people can live to their full potential in order to develop and execute innovative solutions that will spur change and promote equality. They were one of the first groups to hire Arne Duncan after his Ed Secretary stint (do not miss his hardcore street pic here). Oh, and they just bought controlling interest in the Atlantic which, for reasons we'll get to, is kind of a bummer.
Jobs was always a philanthropic power player, and she's logged time in the ed reform biz with NewSchools Venture Fund (We raise contributions from donors and use it to find, fund and support teams of educators and education entrepreneurs who are reimagining public education), but as the widow of Apple Empresario Steve Jobs, she has a huge mountain of money to work with. She is, in fact, the fourth richest woman in the world. And she has decided she would like to fix education.
Jobs has said, “We want to make high schools back into the great equalizers they were meant to be."
To do that, she launched XQ Institute, which launched a big competition-- XQ: The Super School Project.
The Super School Project is an open call to reimagine and design the next American high school. In towns and cities far and wide, teams will unite and take on this important work of our time: rethinking and building schools that deeply prepare our students for the rigorous challenges of college, jobs, and life.
When I wrote about the XQ competition two years ago, I noted that it combined the language of business (manage human capital) and the language of gee-whiz education amateurs who haven't ever consulted someone who actually works in the field (What if we knocked down the walls?). That fits, because there aren't many educators in sight. I was going to pore through leadership list for the XQ project, but there isn't even a job title that involves education. Jobs' co-chief, the other person to occasionally appear in the press materials, is Russlyn Ali, a lawyer who worked for the Education Trust and then became Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the US Departmet of Education under President Obama. Jobs will occasionally cite her "two decades in the education field" but that's just counting back to her 1997 launching of her first non-profit education project, College Track. Oh, and Amplify is a partner in this, too.
Jobs doesn't use many of the dog whistles or talking points of reformsters, except for one that she really loves:
Jobs told the NYT, "The system was created for the work force we needed 100 years ago. Things are not working the way we want it to be working."
In USA Today: The XQ Institute aims to "rethink" American public high schools, which, it maintains, have remained virtually unchanged for a century while the world has transformed dramatically.
"Schools haven't changed in 100 years" is the dead horse Jobs rides in on, a criticism that only makes sense if you don't know what schools were actually like in 1917, and if you haven't actually visited one in the last century.
Last year at this time, XQ announced the ten winners of a Boatload of Money (roughly $10 million per school). It included some public schools, but here the reforminess becomes more apparent. One winner is the Vista Challenge High School in San Diego. They are supported by Personalized Learning company Digital Promise, and VCHS will use the money to spread rigorous personalized learning and “authentic examination.” Betsy DeVos's beloved Grand Rapids public schools will turn a museum into a high school. A RISE charter (Revolutionary Individualized Student Experience) will launch in Los Angeles. In Louisiana, New Harmony High School is going to launch its "school on a barge" concept. Arne "Katrina Was the Best Thing Ever" Duncan got announce that one and said, "I've never been to school on a barge." And another $10 mill went Summit, the Oakland CA charter system that may be lousy at education, but is great at fund raising-- they've also attracted money from Gates and Zuckerberg with their brand of "all you need is a computer" schooling.
EIF stands for Entertainment Industry Foundation, a charity organization that gets an A- from Charity Watch and does lots of good works and has been around since 1942. They've gotten involved in education before, with an initiative in 2015 called "Think It Up" that basically crossed education with DonorsChoose.
I also note that in all the publicity for the event that I've now read, there is no mention of other sponsors, so while I don't have proof, I'm pushed to conclude that Laurene Powell Jobs just busted out her checkbook and bought a full hour of Friday night primetime television on four networks.
What can we expect. Well, music and comedy and documentaries are billed. And we're talking about a SuperSchool live, so presumably we won't bother with any coverage of those dopey Clark Kent schlubby schools where the rest of us slog away. This special will just focus on Jobs' own created reality.
XQ is actually a perfect name for the whole business, because it turns out that this is just some shit at the Jobs people made up. From their site:
Sure, IQ (Intelligence Quotient) is important. It measures how we process information. But it isn’t everything.
In fact, the latest science shows that intelligence is not fixed and that there’s a lot more to a person’s capability than what can be measured in an IQ test.
What also matters is a person’s EQ (Emotional Quotient)—the ability to relate to others, understand emotional cues and collaborate.
But today, neither IQ nor EQ is enough. There’s a certain something, something we call XQ, that’s essential for success in the new era we’re entering.
What does XQ stand for? It stands for "I'm a rich person in Palo Alto, and I don't need to learn from experienced experts in a field when I can just make stuff up myself." On Friday evening, September 8th, I'll probably be playing with babies. But I'll take a moment to be glad that we don't actually have cable, so I can't watch this thing. Because I can't imagine how long it takes to get over having Common and Tom Hanks tell us that we just aren't good enough.
Another wave of PR dropped yesterday, touting a four-network, celebrity-packed, media event, proudly trumpeted everywhere from Variety to USA Today. On September 8, a huge line-up (including Tom Hanks, Yo-Yo Ma, Samuel L. Jackson, Jennifer Hudson and (sorry) Common) will present "an hour-long live television special about reinventing American high schools."
EIF Presents: XQ Super School Live will be highlighting the efforts of the XQ Institute, simulcast on all four major broadcast networks. So who are these people, and how do they have this kind of firepower.
The XQ Institute is an offspring of the Emerson Collective, a Palo Alto-based do-gooding group founded by Laurene Powell Jobs. The organization is dedicated to removing barriers to opportunity so people can live to their full potential in order to develop and execute innovative solutions that will spur change and promote equality. They were one of the first groups to hire Arne Duncan after his Ed Secretary stint (do not miss his hardcore street pic here). Oh, and they just bought controlling interest in the Atlantic which, for reasons we'll get to, is kind of a bummer.
Jobs was always a philanthropic power player, and she's logged time in the ed reform biz with NewSchools Venture Fund (We raise contributions from donors and use it to find, fund and support teams of educators and education entrepreneurs who are reimagining public education), but as the widow of Apple Empresario Steve Jobs, she has a huge mountain of money to work with. She is, in fact, the fourth richest woman in the world. And she has decided she would like to fix education.
Jobs has said, “We want to make high schools back into the great equalizers they were meant to be."
To do that, she launched XQ Institute, which launched a big competition-- XQ: The Super School Project.
The Super School Project is an open call to reimagine and design the next American high school. In towns and cities far and wide, teams will unite and take on this important work of our time: rethinking and building schools that deeply prepare our students for the rigorous challenges of college, jobs, and life.
When I wrote about the XQ competition two years ago, I noted that it combined the language of business (manage human capital) and the language of gee-whiz education amateurs who haven't ever consulted someone who actually works in the field (What if we knocked down the walls?). That fits, because there aren't many educators in sight. I was going to pore through leadership list for the XQ project, but there isn't even a job title that involves education. Jobs' co-chief, the other person to occasionally appear in the press materials, is Russlyn Ali, a lawyer who worked for the Education Trust and then became Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the US Departmet of Education under President Obama. Jobs will occasionally cite her "two decades in the education field" but that's just counting back to her 1997 launching of her first non-profit education project, College Track. Oh, and Amplify is a partner in this, too.
Jobs doesn't use many of the dog whistles or talking points of reformsters, except for one that she really loves:
Jobs told the NYT, "The system was created for the work force we needed 100 years ago. Things are not working the way we want it to be working."
In USA Today: The XQ Institute aims to "rethink" American public high schools, which, it maintains, have remained virtually unchanged for a century while the world has transformed dramatically.
"Schools haven't changed in 100 years" is the dead horse Jobs rides in on, a criticism that only makes sense if you don't know what schools were actually like in 1917, and if you haven't actually visited one in the last century.
Last year at this time, XQ announced the ten winners of a Boatload of Money (roughly $10 million per school). It included some public schools, but here the reforminess becomes more apparent. One winner is the Vista Challenge High School in San Diego. They are supported by Personalized Learning company Digital Promise, and VCHS will use the money to spread rigorous personalized learning and “authentic examination.” Betsy DeVos's beloved Grand Rapids public schools will turn a museum into a high school. A RISE charter (Revolutionary Individualized Student Experience) will launch in Los Angeles. In Louisiana, New Harmony High School is going to launch its "school on a barge" concept. Arne "Katrina Was the Best Thing Ever" Duncan got announce that one and said, "I've never been to school on a barge." And another $10 mill went Summit, the Oakland CA charter system that may be lousy at education, but is great at fund raising-- they've also attracted money from Gates and Zuckerberg with their brand of "all you need is a computer" schooling.
EIF stands for Entertainment Industry Foundation, a charity organization that gets an A- from Charity Watch and does lots of good works and has been around since 1942. They've gotten involved in education before, with an initiative in 2015 called "Think It Up" that basically crossed education with DonorsChoose.
I also note that in all the publicity for the event that I've now read, there is no mention of other sponsors, so while I don't have proof, I'm pushed to conclude that Laurene Powell Jobs just busted out her checkbook and bought a full hour of Friday night primetime television on four networks.
What can we expect. Well, music and comedy and documentaries are billed. And we're talking about a SuperSchool live, so presumably we won't bother with any coverage of those dopey Clark Kent schlubby schools where the rest of us slog away. This special will just focus on Jobs' own created reality.
XQ is actually a perfect name for the whole business, because it turns out that this is just some shit at the Jobs people made up. From their site:
Sure, IQ (Intelligence Quotient) is important. It measures how we process information. But it isn’t everything.
In fact, the latest science shows that intelligence is not fixed and that there’s a lot more to a person’s capability than what can be measured in an IQ test.
What also matters is a person’s EQ (Emotional Quotient)—the ability to relate to others, understand emotional cues and collaborate.
But today, neither IQ nor EQ is enough. There’s a certain something, something we call XQ, that’s essential for success in the new era we’re entering.
What does XQ stand for? It stands for "I'm a rich person in Palo Alto, and I don't need to learn from experienced experts in a field when I can just make stuff up myself." On Friday evening, September 8th, I'll probably be playing with babies. But I'll take a moment to be glad that we don't actually have cable, so I can't watch this thing. Because I can't imagine how long it takes to get over having Common and Tom Hanks tell us that we just aren't good enough.
A Public School's Shame
I am, as any reader of this blog knows, a huge supporter of public schools and public education. And that's why it's important that I make note of when a public school fails, and fails hard. Because as much as I love public education, if we let love blind us, we end up trying to defend the indefensible just because it came from our tribe.
I take no pleasure in noting this story. It's not far away. and it's appalling. The AP reports that five guardians of black students have filed a lawsuit against Woodland Hills High School over systemic and intentional discrimination against black students. In particular, the lawsuit cites five incidents:
In April, the Allegheny County district attorney said he was reviewing allegations that Steve Shaulis, a resource officer at the school, punched and knocked out the tooth of a 14-year-old freshman accused of stealing another’s student cellphone. Pictures of the freshman’s bruised face appeared online.
In May, video surfaced of Shaulis body-slamming a 15-year-old student in 2015 and shocking him with a stun gun.
A video from 2009 shows Shaulis shoving a student into a locker without apparent physical provocation, then shocking the student with a stun gun and arresting him.
One in 2010 shows a behavioral specialist lifting a student up against a locker and slamming him into the ground, breaking the student’s wrist. The student was charged with aggravated assault and disorderly conduct, the lawsuit said, but charges were withdrawn after a district attorney reviewed the video.
The fifth incident involved school principal Kevin Murray, who was caught on a recording last year threatening to punch a 14-year-old special education student in the face and “knock your ... teeth down your throat.” Murray resigned last week.
The school has suffered a long string of problems and unfortunate revelations. Their lawyer has suggested that this is just an ambulance-chasing lawyer who has tied together several widely separate instances, and while it may be true that the lawyer for the plaintiffs is not acting out of altruism and a burning desire for social justice, it doesn't really matter-- any one of these instances should have resulted in two reactions:
1) The rolling of a head or two
2) Some soul-searching by the school
In a school setting of any type, you don't get to say, "Well, maybe there is an issue here with racially-biased excessive violence. Let's see if any more black kids get roughed up for no good reason." You don't even get to say, "He was mouthy and disrespectful, so I beat the crap out of him" because this is a school and we are the grownups and they, regardless of how big they are, are the kids.
Charters did not rise up in urban areas for no reason at all, and public schools don't get to say, "Who, us? We never do any bad stuff like that."
The argument about whether public or charter schools have a greater history or tendency of racism was kind of ridiculous-- bot have plenty of systemic racism in their backgrounds, and both are fully capable of harboring and nurturing racism right now, today. It's not okay. What happened at Woodland Hills is not okay. And at a public school, where we are charged to care for every single student, without exception, it is an even greater shame.
I take no pleasure in noting this story. It's not far away. and it's appalling. The AP reports that five guardians of black students have filed a lawsuit against Woodland Hills High School over systemic and intentional discrimination against black students. In particular, the lawsuit cites five incidents:
In April, the Allegheny County district attorney said he was reviewing allegations that Steve Shaulis, a resource officer at the school, punched and knocked out the tooth of a 14-year-old freshman accused of stealing another’s student cellphone. Pictures of the freshman’s bruised face appeared online.
In May, video surfaced of Shaulis body-slamming a 15-year-old student in 2015 and shocking him with a stun gun.
A video from 2009 shows Shaulis shoving a student into a locker without apparent physical provocation, then shocking the student with a stun gun and arresting him.
One in 2010 shows a behavioral specialist lifting a student up against a locker and slamming him into the ground, breaking the student’s wrist. The student was charged with aggravated assault and disorderly conduct, the lawsuit said, but charges were withdrawn after a district attorney reviewed the video.
The fifth incident involved school principal Kevin Murray, who was caught on a recording last year threatening to punch a 14-year-old special education student in the face and “knock your ... teeth down your throat.” Murray resigned last week.
The school has suffered a long string of problems and unfortunate revelations. Their lawyer has suggested that this is just an ambulance-chasing lawyer who has tied together several widely separate instances, and while it may be true that the lawyer for the plaintiffs is not acting out of altruism and a burning desire for social justice, it doesn't really matter-- any one of these instances should have resulted in two reactions:
1) The rolling of a head or two
2) Some soul-searching by the school
In a school setting of any type, you don't get to say, "Well, maybe there is an issue here with racially-biased excessive violence. Let's see if any more black kids get roughed up for no good reason." You don't even get to say, "He was mouthy and disrespectful, so I beat the crap out of him" because this is a school and we are the grownups and they, regardless of how big they are, are the kids.
Charters did not rise up in urban areas for no reason at all, and public schools don't get to say, "Who, us? We never do any bad stuff like that."
The argument about whether public or charter schools have a greater history or tendency of racism was kind of ridiculous-- bot have plenty of systemic racism in their backgrounds, and both are fully capable of harboring and nurturing racism right now, today. It's not okay. What happened at Woodland Hills is not okay. And at a public school, where we are charged to care for every single student, without exception, it is an even greater shame.
Wednesday, August 23, 2017
OH: Grifters Keep on Grfiting
Haters gotta hate. Players gotta play. And ECOT gotta keep finding ways to latch itself onto public tax dollars for fun and profit.
You may recall that ECOT has been working hard to win the Worst Cyber School In The World medal, which is no small achievement in a very crowded field. The Columbus Dispatch has been following these guys for over a decade (you can find the bulk of their coverage collected here). If we go back to 2006, we find folks questioning the then-fledgling school's reporting of its enrollment and the quality of its program. The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow was, according the Newark superintendent, “failing to meet even minimum standards of operation.”
The continued lodging of those complaints was not a small story-- ECOT became the tenth largest school district in the state. And ECOT's owner, William Lager was ready to deliver a master class on how to use charter schools to line your own pockets. ECOT, owned by William Lager, bought its curriculum from IQ Innovations, a company owned by William Lager. The day-to-day management of ECOT was farmed out to Altair Learning Management, a company owned by William Lager.
Not that Lager was keeping all that money for himself. In the years 2011-2015 (the only ones made available to researchers), Lager wrote 121 checks totaling $984,302 to various friendly Ohio politicians. Plunderbund tracked Lager's giving back to 2000 (ECOT's origin) and discovered a staggering total over $2 million! Lager is also a member of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s Digital Learning Now, another reformy advocacy group that quietly folded its tents in 2015
That may help explain the continued survival of a school the New York Times called out for having the highest dropout rate in the nation. ECOT has been nothing if not feisty in its responses; in 2016, when the state demanded the chance to audit actual attendance at the cyber school, ECOT counter-sued, arguing that its 2003 deal with the state only required them to offer 920 hours of education-- not make sure that anyone was actually attending the 920 hours.
Its protests were in vain. The state determined that in 2015-2016, the school billed the state for 15,000 students, pocketing $106 million. The state of Ohio determined that only 6,300 students were active participants in the on line "school." ECOT owed the state $60 million.
Lager fought back hard. He has appealed the rulings all the way to Ohio's Supreme Court; they were not helpful. . He made sad noises about how he'd have to lay people off, and that paying back the money he stole from the state would threaten the viability of his fake business (I'm paraphrasing). Critics pointed out that Lager's huge profit margins could take it, and the Plain Dealer found the school had $17 million in cash reserves against the $21 million annual payment to Lager's companies. In perhaps the ballsiest move of all, ECOT bought tv time for an ad to raise public support for non-repayment. That's right-- Lager spent taxpayer money to try to avoid giving back taxpayer money.The Oho State Auditor told him to knock it off.
With no friends in the legal system, it might seem that Lager and ECOT were finally doomed.
But no.
According to yesterday's Dispatch, Lager has a new plan:
ECOT, the online charter giant one study found produced more dropouts than any other school in the nation, is moving into a new line of business — “dropout recovery.”
Dropout recovery schools face looser reporting standards. Changing status might get ECOT some space from the heavy hand of state inquiry, and not for nothing, it will also open up a whole new market for the embattled cyber school. Certainly it puts the school in the company of other schools with an execrable graduation rate. In 2014, the Akron Beacon Journal reported that Ohio's dropout recovery schools were doing such a bad job that they gave Ohio the only worsening dropout rate in the country. If that is still the case, ECOT may have finally found a field in which it will not stand out as being the absolute worst.
Last year, State Auditor Dave Yost found attendance rates at the state’s dropout-recovery charters were horrible: only a third of students showed up, according to a surprise headcount. Auditors also found between 0 to 50 percent of students had showed up for class at the 14 dropout-recovery schools visited, for an average of 34 percent.
ECOT has been running about 36%. So, winning?
Most importantly, of course, this will allow Lager to keep the gravy train running by scamming the taxpayers of Ohio. Tell me that one again about how the invisible hand of the free market will clear away the bad charter schools?
You may recall that ECOT has been working hard to win the Worst Cyber School In The World medal, which is no small achievement in a very crowded field. The Columbus Dispatch has been following these guys for over a decade (you can find the bulk of their coverage collected here). If we go back to 2006, we find folks questioning the then-fledgling school's reporting of its enrollment and the quality of its program. The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow was, according the Newark superintendent, “failing to meet even minimum standards of operation.”
 |
| Caption courtesy of Plunderbund. I see no reason to disgaree |
The continued lodging of those complaints was not a small story-- ECOT became the tenth largest school district in the state. And ECOT's owner, William Lager was ready to deliver a master class on how to use charter schools to line your own pockets. ECOT, owned by William Lager, bought its curriculum from IQ Innovations, a company owned by William Lager. The day-to-day management of ECOT was farmed out to Altair Learning Management, a company owned by William Lager.
Not that Lager was keeping all that money for himself. In the years 2011-2015 (the only ones made available to researchers), Lager wrote 121 checks totaling $984,302 to various friendly Ohio politicians. Plunderbund tracked Lager's giving back to 2000 (ECOT's origin) and discovered a staggering total over $2 million! Lager is also a member of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s Digital Learning Now, another reformy advocacy group that quietly folded its tents in 2015
That may help explain the continued survival of a school the New York Times called out for having the highest dropout rate in the nation. ECOT has been nothing if not feisty in its responses; in 2016, when the state demanded the chance to audit actual attendance at the cyber school, ECOT counter-sued, arguing that its 2003 deal with the state only required them to offer 920 hours of education-- not make sure that anyone was actually attending the 920 hours.
Its protests were in vain. The state determined that in 2015-2016, the school billed the state for 15,000 students, pocketing $106 million. The state of Ohio determined that only 6,300 students were active participants in the on line "school." ECOT owed the state $60 million.
Lager fought back hard. He has appealed the rulings all the way to Ohio's Supreme Court; they were not helpful. . He made sad noises about how he'd have to lay people off, and that paying back the money he stole from the state would threaten the viability of his fake business (I'm paraphrasing). Critics pointed out that Lager's huge profit margins could take it, and the Plain Dealer found the school had $17 million in cash reserves against the $21 million annual payment to Lager's companies. In perhaps the ballsiest move of all, ECOT bought tv time for an ad to raise public support for non-repayment. That's right-- Lager spent taxpayer money to try to avoid giving back taxpayer money.The Oho State Auditor told him to knock it off.
With no friends in the legal system, it might seem that Lager and ECOT were finally doomed.
But no.
According to yesterday's Dispatch, Lager has a new plan:
ECOT, the online charter giant one study found produced more dropouts than any other school in the nation, is moving into a new line of business — “dropout recovery.”
Dropout recovery schools face looser reporting standards. Changing status might get ECOT some space from the heavy hand of state inquiry, and not for nothing, it will also open up a whole new market for the embattled cyber school. Certainly it puts the school in the company of other schools with an execrable graduation rate. In 2014, the Akron Beacon Journal reported that Ohio's dropout recovery schools were doing such a bad job that they gave Ohio the only worsening dropout rate in the country. If that is still the case, ECOT may have finally found a field in which it will not stand out as being the absolute worst.
Last year, State Auditor Dave Yost found attendance rates at the state’s dropout-recovery charters were horrible: only a third of students showed up, according to a surprise headcount. Auditors also found between 0 to 50 percent of students had showed up for class at the 14 dropout-recovery schools visited, for an average of 34 percent.
ECOT has been running about 36%. So, winning?
Most importantly, of course, this will allow Lager to keep the gravy train running by scamming the taxpayers of Ohio. Tell me that one again about how the invisible hand of the free market will clear away the bad charter schools?
A Good Bad Writing Resource
I have a fun-- and free-- recommendation for everyone interested in the teaching of writing.
Published by the Digital Publishing Institute at WVU Libraries and in part by Inside Higher Ed, and absolutely free for the download, Bad Ideas About Writing is a compendium of essays by a wide assortment of teachers and scholars about the many terrible myths of writing instruction. Growing out of a project about the sciences (These Ideas Must Die), this book is aimed at a broad audience, as explained by editors Cheryl Ball and Drew Loewe:
This project is necessary because while scholars in writing studies (just as in any academic field) argue to and against one another in scholarly journals, books, and conference talks, those forms
of knowledge-making don’t consistently find their way into the public’s understanding of writing. Yet “the public” in all its manifestations—teachers, students, parents, administrators, lawmakers, news media—are important to how writing is conceptualized and taught. These publics deserve clearly articulated and well-researched arguments about what is not working, what must die, and what is blocking progress in current understandings of writing.
The book is organized around several broad topic headings:
Bad Ideas about What Good Writing Is
Bad Ideas about Who Good Writers Are
Bad Ideas about Style, Usage and Grammar
Bad Ideas about Writing Techniques
Bad Ideas about Genres
Bad Ideas about Assessing Writing
Bad Ideas about Writing and Digital Technology
Bad Ideas about Writing Teachers
Packed under those headings are sixty-two separate articles, each under the heading of a beloved Bad Idea. Here are just some of the Bad Ideas addressed:
America is facing a literacy crisis
Writing knowledge transfers easily
Writers are mythical, magical, and damaged
Some people are just born good writers
Writers block just happens to people
Good writers always follow my rules
Teaching grammar improves writing
Excellent academic writing must be serious
Creative writing is a unique category
The five-paragraph essay is rhetorically sound
The five-paragraph theme teaches "beyond the test"
Research starts with a thesis statement
Grading has always made writing better
When responding to student writing, more is better
SAT scores are useful for placing students in writing courses
Gamification makes writing fun
Digital natives and digital immigrants
You're going to need this for college
Anyone can teach writing
The pieces cover a wide spectrum from "I don't believe anyone still thinks this" to "Hey! That's how I teach writing." Each is a discussion of positive steps-- of fixes and ideas-- rather than just taking pot shots at a particular Bad Idea. There are lots of "instead of that, try this--" elements here. And yes, some chapters kind of contradict each other-- that's okay, too.
Each essay is grounded in research and comes with "for further reading" suggestions at the end. The writing is accessible enough that I am already considering a couple of these for handouts to my own students. The essays are short and to the point, and while you may not agree with all of them, they still provide a starting point for some reflection on practice.
I have not finished poring through this book, but I'm kind of excited about it, and I recommend it to all my writing teacher friends. Thanks to my own former student Dr. John Raucci (Associate Professor of English at Frostburg State in Maryland) for bringing the book to my attention.
Published by the Digital Publishing Institute at WVU Libraries and in part by Inside Higher Ed, and absolutely free for the download, Bad Ideas About Writing is a compendium of essays by a wide assortment of teachers and scholars about the many terrible myths of writing instruction. Growing out of a project about the sciences (These Ideas Must Die), this book is aimed at a broad audience, as explained by editors Cheryl Ball and Drew Loewe:
This project is necessary because while scholars in writing studies (just as in any academic field) argue to and against one another in scholarly journals, books, and conference talks, those forms
of knowledge-making don’t consistently find their way into the public’s understanding of writing. Yet “the public” in all its manifestations—teachers, students, parents, administrators, lawmakers, news media—are important to how writing is conceptualized and taught. These publics deserve clearly articulated and well-researched arguments about what is not working, what must die, and what is blocking progress in current understandings of writing.
The book is organized around several broad topic headings:
Bad Ideas about What Good Writing Is
Bad Ideas about Who Good Writers Are
Bad Ideas about Style, Usage and Grammar
Bad Ideas about Writing Techniques
Bad Ideas about Genres
Bad Ideas about Assessing Writing
Bad Ideas about Writing and Digital Technology
Bad Ideas about Writing Teachers
Packed under those headings are sixty-two separate articles, each under the heading of a beloved Bad Idea. Here are just some of the Bad Ideas addressed:
America is facing a literacy crisis
Writing knowledge transfers easily
Writers are mythical, magical, and damaged
Some people are just born good writers
Writers block just happens to people
Good writers always follow my rules
Teaching grammar improves writing
Excellent academic writing must be serious
Creative writing is a unique category
The five-paragraph essay is rhetorically sound
The five-paragraph theme teaches "beyond the test"
Research starts with a thesis statement
Grading has always made writing better
When responding to student writing, more is better
SAT scores are useful for placing students in writing courses
Gamification makes writing fun
Digital natives and digital immigrants
You're going to need this for college
Anyone can teach writing
The pieces cover a wide spectrum from "I don't believe anyone still thinks this" to "Hey! That's how I teach writing." Each is a discussion of positive steps-- of fixes and ideas-- rather than just taking pot shots at a particular Bad Idea. There are lots of "instead of that, try this--" elements here. And yes, some chapters kind of contradict each other-- that's okay, too.
Each essay is grounded in research and comes with "for further reading" suggestions at the end. The writing is accessible enough that I am already considering a couple of these for handouts to my own students. The essays are short and to the point, and while you may not agree with all of them, they still provide a starting point for some reflection on practice.
I have not finished poring through this book, but I'm kind of excited about it, and I recommend it to all my writing teacher friends. Thanks to my own former student Dr. John Raucci (Associate Professor of English at Frostburg State in Maryland) for bringing the book to my attention.
Tuesday, August 22, 2017
Bribing for PARCC
Since the days that No Child Left Untested Behind first mandated the Big Standardized Test, teachers and administrators who work in actual schools have recognized the problems inherent in trying to get useful data out of a test that students don't care about.
When they're still in elementary school, students can still be nudged along by school pride and a desire to make their teacher proud. A few pep rallies, maybe a super-cool video on youtube, and they'll plunge bravely ahead just because their school wants them to.
But by middle school, aka the years in which tweens discover that everything in life sucks, students have figured it out. The BS Test is boring and stupid and doesn't actually matter and neither does stupid old Mrs. Ipswitch who is so absolutely not the boss of me. In other words, I think there's a reason that many schools report a dip in eighth grade BS Test scores, and I don't think it has anything to do with the actual quality of education.
Schools, however, depending on the state, need students to produce those scores. This is one of the huge problems of test-centered "accountability"-- it flips a school upside down, and instead of the school existing to provide students with an education, the students now exist to provide the school with good scores.
And what better way to formalize this new relationship then to really double down on treating the students like employees-- and pay them for their work.
Here's Mesa Alta Junior High School in New Mexico doing just that-- students who scored high on the PARCC for MAJ were paid $100 for their efforts on behalf of the school.
The local paper reported on this as if it was a heartwarming tale of general swellness, and not, say, a fairly blatant admission that the tests do not actually have any intrinsic value for students. And if you want to tell me that obviously these students are not being treated like school employees, well, then, there's only one other thing to call the $100 payment.
A bribe.
I don't offer you $100 to kiss your loved ones or feed your children or wash your hair in the morning or eat food. I don't do it because these things have intrinsic value; they matter on their own, and come with their own rewards packed inside. Bribes are for when we need to nudge someone to perform a task that has otherwise has no value to them.
Worse, if you bribe me to kiss my spouse, I may wonder why I'm not being paid to kiss my kids. If my focus is on external rewards, I may never even see the intrinsic rewards that crop up in my path daily.
This is where we are with the BS Tests. We've thrown up our hands and admitted there's no reason to try to do well on them unless someone offers you cold, hard cash. We've tried (and continue trying) to game the system with all sorts of test prep, so why not fall back on the oldest system gaming technique of all-- bribery. Other than, of course, having to face the Kafkaesque slow death of the soul that comes with realizing that we are perpetuating and feeding a system that serves nobody. Well, except for some middle school kids who get some extra spending money.
When they're still in elementary school, students can still be nudged along by school pride and a desire to make their teacher proud. A few pep rallies, maybe a super-cool video on youtube, and they'll plunge bravely ahead just because their school wants them to.
But by middle school, aka the years in which tweens discover that everything in life sucks, students have figured it out. The BS Test is boring and stupid and doesn't actually matter and neither does stupid old Mrs. Ipswitch who is so absolutely not the boss of me. In other words, I think there's a reason that many schools report a dip in eighth grade BS Test scores, and I don't think it has anything to do with the actual quality of education.
Schools, however, depending on the state, need students to produce those scores. This is one of the huge problems of test-centered "accountability"-- it flips a school upside down, and instead of the school existing to provide students with an education, the students now exist to provide the school with good scores.
And what better way to formalize this new relationship then to really double down on treating the students like employees-- and pay them for their work.
Here's Mesa Alta Junior High School in New Mexico doing just that-- students who scored high on the PARCC for MAJ were paid $100 for their efforts on behalf of the school.
The local paper reported on this as if it was a heartwarming tale of general swellness, and not, say, a fairly blatant admission that the tests do not actually have any intrinsic value for students. And if you want to tell me that obviously these students are not being treated like school employees, well, then, there's only one other thing to call the $100 payment.
A bribe.
I don't offer you $100 to kiss your loved ones or feed your children or wash your hair in the morning or eat food. I don't do it because these things have intrinsic value; they matter on their own, and come with their own rewards packed inside. Bribes are for when we need to nudge someone to perform a task that has otherwise has no value to them.
Worse, if you bribe me to kiss my spouse, I may wonder why I'm not being paid to kiss my kids. If my focus is on external rewards, I may never even see the intrinsic rewards that crop up in my path daily.
This is where we are with the BS Tests. We've thrown up our hands and admitted there's no reason to try to do well on them unless someone offers you cold, hard cash. We've tried (and continue trying) to game the system with all sorts of test prep, so why not fall back on the oldest system gaming technique of all-- bribery. Other than, of course, having to face the Kafkaesque slow death of the soul that comes with realizing that we are perpetuating and feeding a system that serves nobody. Well, except for some middle school kids who get some extra spending money.
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