Things For Which I'd Trade a Donut

It's Teacher Appreciation Day, and all across America, teachers are being treated to donuts and notepads and cookies and maybe a nice email from administration. I don't for one minute want to seem ungrateful for these things-- my administration is setting out some food in the lounge Thursdeay and I will be more than happy to accept that expression of appreciation by stuffing it in my mouth hole.

But like many teachers, I have mixed feelings about this day and the week of which it's a part.

I like donuts, and I like the thoughtfulness behind those appreciation donuts, but here are some of the things for which I would trade those donuts--

* A really nice chair and desk, maybe even located in a personal space. Teachers are the only professionals who can look enviously at cubicle dwellers. 

* Voters who stopped casting their votes for anti-education candidates for office. I don't care what party-- just stop voting for people who neither understand nor appreciate this country's system of public education. Stop voting for people who think teachers are overpaid layabouts. Stop voting for people who think public education is one more government program that should be shrunk until it's small enough to drown in a bathtub.

* Policies that support public education instead of attacking it, dismantling it, and privatizing it.

* Policies that show respect for teachers instead of assuming that anyone with a pulse can be stuck in a classroom with good results.

* An end to the use of narrow bad standardized tests as a measure of teacher quality.

* An end to the assumption that all teachers probably stink unless they can prove otherwise.

* Respect for the profession that runs so deep that policy-makers never launch a piece of policy without saying, "Well, we can't make a move on this without consulting some actual teachers." Or even-- and now I'm just fantasizing wildly-- policymakers who say, "Well, we can't possibly write this policy without teachers in the room with us. In fact, maybe we should just leave them in the room and we'll wait outside."

* Pay levels for teachers that, at a minimum, reflect the actual market value of the job and, at a maximum, reflect an honest desire to recruit and retain really good people to the profession.

* The end of narrow bad standardized tests as a measure of educational effectiveness.

* The end of narrow bad standardized tests as a measure of student learning.

* Hell, just get rid of the damned tests.

* Someone from the front office walks down to a teacher's classroom to say, "What can we in administration do to help you do your job?"

* Also, if my donut could have sprinkles on it, that would be cool.

South Carolina's Teacher Walkout

South Carolina is currently making a point that I've tried to make elsewhere-- the teacher walkouts in Arizona and Colorado and Kentucky and West Virginia [and Oklahoma] and (soon) North Carolina are not new. There's been a teacher walkout going on for a decade. But since the teachers haven't been walking out al at once, we've been calling it a shortage instead.

The State in Columbia, South Carolina is running a series of articles (also being run in several other McClatchy newspapers)* about the slow motion walkout.

Jamie Self has been on this beat for a while with the long-running series Classrooms in Crisis, and though it will take you a while to work through all of the reporting, it's well worth your time for the mixture of well-drawn detail and sense of the bigger picture. Much of this is familiar-- here's the South Carolina Teacher of the Year earning a second paycheck by stocking shelves at Sears (uh-oh). Here's a discussion of how measures to end the teacher shortage will cost money that state leaders don't want to pay. And for folks caught up in new discussions of how to discipline- or not-- students, here's a look at how teacher safety plays its part in the teacher "shortage."

South Carolina has also been involved in a trend that I first noticed being reported four years ago-- the outsourcing of teaching jobs. Recruitment was targeting Filipino teachers back then, but Self and Cody Dulaney report that South Carolina is now searching internationally, bringing in people who have no US passport and no teaching degree to take SC teaching jobs. International hires now make up 7% of the teaching force, part of a "cultural exchange," and not permanent hires. In addition to the Philippines, SC is drawing from Jamaica and India. That 7% statewide means that individual districts have substantial numbers. Hampton school district is employing 21 international teachers-- that's 36% of its teaching staff. Williamsburg has 79 international teachers.

But when we turn to big-picture stories like "Why SC teachers are leaving in record numbers," what's striking is that the problems listed are exactly the same issues that have led to teacher strikes in other states

"They're so tied up and worried about all the paperwork that needs to be done that they're unable to actually do the job that they applied for, which is educating children," said Natasha Jefferson, a Charleston mom worried about the education her eighth-grader is receiving. Two of his classes are taught by a rotating cast of substitute teachers.

Jennifer Garrett of the Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention and Advancement has some thoughts about the attempt to draw teachers from other states and countries:

We're not going to recruit ourselves out of this teacher shortage. Statistically, it's not possible to fill the gaps.

Self interviewed over three dozen current and former educators. Many asked not to be named, which all by itself tells you something about the atmosphere in SC schools. All of the complaints are familiar.

Pay too low to support a family.

Emphasis on the standardized test.

Endless meetings about administrivia and test prep, rather than a chance to work on the actual work.

The story of Theresa Schlosser includes an out-of-control first grader that she could not help, but that was not the main reason she left teaching:

An administrator saying, "'Don't worry, you'll teach them how to pass the test.,'" pushed her over her limit one day, she said.

"I had to go out in the hall and cry," Schlosser said, who is now a stay-at-home mom. "I didn't sign up for this, to teach somebody to pass a test."

South Carolina actually has a program that allows retirees to be pulled back into the classroom while still benefitting from their pension-- but that program ends soon, and a $10K limit on what retirees can earn will push many of them back out again.

And running through all the complaints, the refrain that "we are set up for failure" and a sense of powerlessness. Says Caleb Surface, who dropped out of the teaching pipeline while still in college. "Being able to enact change in the education system is not a task remotely accessible inside the classroom."

Low pay. Low benefits. Lack of power. Lack of resources. A focus on things other than actually doing the work of educating students. And a messy charter system that is not getting results, but is still draining money from the public system.

South Carolina lost almost 7,000 teachers last year. 1 in 20 SC teachers left the profession entirely. Teachers in the college pipeline have dropped by 30% in four years.

These are all the same factors that teachers are talking about in states with teacher strikes, but there are two critical differences. Because South Carolina's teachers are leaving one at a time-- or just seeking another career to begin with-- they aren't getting the same kind of attention as teachers in Arizona or West Virginia. The other difference is the bigger problem-- when the teachers of Arizona and West Virginia walked out, they did so with an announced willingness to come back to the classroom. But the exiting teachers of South Carolina are leaving, one by one, for good.

In short, legislators in states like South Carolina may consider themselves lucky that they aren't facing a full-out strike, but they are mistaken. Slow motion walkouts are harder to fix, easier to ignore, and permanent. States like South Carolina would be lucky to have a "real" strike, because it would force them to deal with the issues behind their fake teacher shortage. As it is, unless some leaders really step up, they will watch their education system bleed to death one drop at a time.

*I originally ran across the series in the News&Observer, but failed to notice that Self and Dulaney are connected to The State. This has been edited to correct my original mistake.

ICYMI: Zoo Day Edition (5/6)

Today the Pittsburgh Zoo hosts a reunion of sorts, and we are headed there shortly. But first I have some reading for you from the week. Remember to share the pieces that grab your attention.

Whither the Novel

Another district meets the EngageNY English language curriculum, and they are not impressed.

The Effect of Mandated 3rd Grade Retention

A study looks at Florida's policy requiring third graders to pass the BS Reading Test or be held back. How's that working out? As poorly as one would expect.

The Nation's Top Teachers Met with Betsy DeVos  

DeVos met with the fifty(ish) Teachers of the Year. Some came away a bit underwhelmed.

What Do We Teach in American Schools

Jersey Jazzman looks at some current stories in education and notes that these are not great days for the treatment of women.

Virtual Schools 2018

Ready for one more study showing that cyber schools don't deliver on any of their promises? NEPC has the newest entry in this ever-growing genre.

Bond Firm Takes Sides in Texas
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Turns out an investment firm in Texas has its own opinion about how charter schools affect the finances of public schools. It matches what many of us have been saying for years.

Full Control  

Mercedes Schneider revisits a truly awful article opposing teacher unions for charter schools.

Beware the "Learning Engineers"   

Wrench in the Gears looks at some of the technocrats behind new edumovements.

Important but False Claims about EVAAS in Ohio  

Audrey Amrein-Beardsley debunks some Ohio baloney

Finn's Trouble with Teacher Strikes

Chester "Checker" Finn is the former honcho of the Fordham Institute, but he still crops up from time to time to express his thoughts about one issue or another. Last week he decided to weigh in on the teacher strikes around the country. Like many conservatives, he's having trouble finding exactly the right notes to hit when opposing these work stoppages. Let me humbly disagree.

Finn starts out by acknowledging that there are reasons to sympathize with striking teachers:

They’re not very well paid, inflation is creeping up, a lot of classrooms are crowded with kids and lacking in textbooks and supplies, and a number of state and local budgets for school operations are extremely tight and sometimes declining.

All true, and all carefully sidestepping the fact that these are not things that just kind of happened somehow, but are the results of deliberate choices deliberately made by legislators in the affected states. But Finn does note that in addition to "wearing red, shutting down schools, and marching around," teachers have been showing their dissatisfaction by walking off the job one at a time.

But having acknowledged all of these things, Finn would like us to keep four other points in mind as we understand why those lousy teachers should be opposed how to balance these nuanced issues.

First,  "though state and local budgets in some places are tight because tight-fingered policymakers have cut taxes and slashed spending, in other places there’s just not as much revenue as was expected." He blames that on slow recovery, low growth and wealthy people running away to other states. That last one begs for some actual support-- is that really happening, really? The other two are a nicer way of observing that the expectations that weren't met are the same old magical baloney of trickle down economics. Kansas is just the most spectacular example of how the economic fantasy of austerity for the poor and tax cuts for the wealthy has failed. "Not as much revenue as was expected" is not an indictment of economic growth-- it's an indictment of state leaders whose powers of expectation were ruined by belief in voodoo economics. In short, the "low growth" is not something that "just happened" (just as the "great recession" was not a mysterious act of God and nature) but the direct result of bad policies by bad legislators who didn't do their damned jobs. This is like a head of a household spending the family budget on magic beans and then shrugging and saying, "Well, you know, some times things just don't work out. What are you going to do?"

Second, "U.S. school systems continue to use available dollars to hire more teachers rather than paying more generous salaries to the teachers they’ve already got—which also means hiring more teachers rather than better teachers."

On this point, Finn overlooks the obvious. More teachers = smaller classes. Smaller classes = more effective work by the teachers you've already got. The fantasy that teachers can be objectively ranked as if teacher quality exists in a vacuum is also a fantasy. Finn does note that two states where student population has grown faster than the employed teacher workforce are Oklahoma and Arizona. He bemoans the fact that Chicago teachers seem unlikely to move to Houston, but he blames it on tenure, benefits and pensions instead of, say, the fact that Houston offers little or no incentive for anyone to move there to teach.

Third is the same old teacher shaming. Teachers don't get enough respect, but they'd get more if they didn't support certain political and policy actions. Since they insist in on things like due process for firing and pay scales, well, they just lose the respect of the public. This would be a good place for Finn to insert some sort of evidence that in states where teachers don't have tenure or collective bargaining rights, they are much more respected, but oddly enough, no such evidence is offered. Finn also chides unions for protecting their weakest members, which is like criticizing lawyers for allowing defense attorneys to exist. Either you have due process or you don't, and if you want to be able to say, "Look, this guy stinks so much we should just fire him without any due process," then you are arguing that there should be no due process. Period.

Most of all, Finn wants us to pay teachers based on how excellent they are (and what they teach-- apparently Finn thinks phys ed teachers are overpaid), even though we do not have any method of effectively determining who's great and who's not. Finn refers to test results which A) are a lousy way to measure teacher awesomeness and B) currently only measure math and reading (and in some places, science). But hey-- if we magically implemented this system we don't know how to implement, people would respect teachers more.

Fourth-- well, let's go really old school. Teachers work short days and get summers off, so they don't deserve more pay. It's sad that some teachers take extra jobs, admits Finn, but he blames the school year and work day for being too short. You can pick your favorite counter-argument to this one. Compare the actual hours and days and find that teachers don't work that much less. Compare teacher wages to other workers who don't put in a full year, like pro basketball stars. Compute what you would have to pay teachers if you paid them babysitter wages (spoiler alert: a ton). Observe that teachers are frickin' professionals and not hourly workers. Or, for the free market conservatives, note that the going rate for a thing, whether it's a commodity, a manufactured good, or skilled labor, is set by the invisible hand, and not what you feel like paying. If you think the work is so short and easy, come do it yourself.

So Finn's argument against the strikes range from the creatively misguided to old-school insulting. He has, of course, completely ignored the part of this that is flummoxing many conservatives-- the strikes are not simply about teacher wages but about teaching conditions. When you say teachers should suck it up and teach classes of forty kids, you are saying that parents should be happy to put their kids in forty-student classes. When you argue that teachers should stop whining about moldy rooms, you are saying that students should gladly sit in those rooms as well. When you argue that teachers should not get fussy about forty-year-old textbooks, you are saying that students should be happy with those books as well. Teachers work conditions really are student learning conditions, and when those conditions have been deliberately degraded by people who want to save a buck or leaders who want to drive more families into charter schools-- in short, when those lousy conditions are the result of deliberate bad choices made by legislators, then all the teacher shaming in the world isn't really going to help.

Finn says that if we want to ameliorate these conditions, "a great many things need to change in very big ways." He's correct, but those many things are less about teachers being uppity and more about state leaders actually committing to support public education.

My Imaginary Gun

What if the shooter came in right.... now?

Because this is the world we live in now, I've been conducting a little thought experiment for almost two months. What would I do if a shooter entered my building, and if I were armed?

The thought experiment has been pretty simple-- at various moments during my teaching day, I imagine that a shooter has just entered the building, maybe nearby or maybe in another wing. My building is pretty spread out and sprawling, There certainly scenarios in which an active shooter situation plays out so far away from me that I don't even know about until it's over, or in which I find out from announcement, text, or fleeing students, and I simply take my students and go running out of one of the two nearby exits.

I suppose in some of those scenarios I could grab my gun and head toward the shooter. I don't know if I'm that brave or not, but I do know I would feel a primary obligation to stay with my own students and make sure that they had someone with them to help get them to safety and to help keep them from freaking out.

One of the things I immediately noticed as I started conducting the experiment was that the vast majority of the time, I am surrounded by students. If a shooter enters my room and I'm on the other side, I have to shoot past students to hit him (I always assume that it will be a him). If the shooter targets a crowded area, like a school assembly or a lunch period, there would be students between us and behind him. In the hall between classes? More of the same.

In short, in the vast number of scenarios that I imagined, I would have to be a well-trained sharpshooter with a weapon more accurate than a handgun to fire at the active shooter without hitting my own students.

Many of these scenarios would also require me to be carrying the gun with me at all times, which opens up its own set of scenarios that I did not really consider, other than to note that most of those scenarios are bad.

What if my class has enough warning to lock down in place, and I'm using the firearm to defend the door? This is a problem in my case because there are two doors into my classroom, and the take cover area for my room would have to be the space between those doors. In other words, I would have to make a choice about which door to stand beside, and if I guess wrong, there will be students between me and the other door I want to defend.

I could play this morbid game for weeks because there are so many alternative scenarios, and the specifics of each one make a huge difference. What if the shooter comes when students are doing a presentation, or doing group work spread out over two classrooms and the hall? What difference will it make if the shooter shows up during the period when my students tend to listen to me as opposed to the period when the students tend to dismiss everything I say?

And what would I do if, as is often the case, the shooter is a current or former student? Could I shoot at a student?

After conducting this thought experiment, I can say this-- while I can't say that a gun would never, ever be useful in a shooter situation, I can say that 98 times out of 100, it would not be helpful at all. And that's just assuming I would be properly and regularly trained enough to stay relatively cool under pressure. If I measure that against all the possible problems of having the gun on my person or in my room, I must conclude again that arming teachers is folly. Of course, the noise about arming teachers has gotten much quieter since teachers started getting all militant with strikes and walkouts and gathering around the state capitol.

Why conduct this experiment at all? Because that's the world we live and teach in now. Why did I stop the experiment? Same reason. My wife came home yesterday after spending a half day learning about how to stop bleeding in a gunshot wound victim. She spent a half day learning about packing material into wounds so that her ten-year-old students would be less likely to bleed out in a nightmare shooter scenario.

That's the world we live in-- a world in which schools think about this stuff way too much. So I'm going to do my part by thinking about it less. Thought experiment over. Don't arm teachers.

Tampio: Common Core vs. Democracy

So I have another reading recommendation for you. This time it's from Nicholas Tampio, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University and friend of this blog. Common Core: National education Standards and the Threat to Democracy approaches the Common Core territory from a slightly different angle-- does such a system belong in a democratic(ish) country? The title telegraphs Tampio's conclusion, but it's still worth your time to read this book.

Another addition to your read-me stack

Tampio is impressively fair and measured, and his book lays out multiple sides of the issue clearly (well, except for some of the really crazy ones); this book is not merely an argument for one side of the Common Core debate, but a well-sourced explication of many sides. In doing so, Tampio shows an intellectual honesty and even-handedness that I appreciate-- it's not generally useful to assume that people on The Other Side of an issue disagree with you because they are evil and/or stupid. If you've been trying to understand where some Core fans are coming from, Tampio's book covers that nicely.

Tampio considers the arguments for and against any nationals stanrdas at all, and then spends a chapter each considering specific standards (ELA, math, science, history and, yes, even sexuality standards) looking in each case at the specific problems with each set of standards.

Tampio's explanation of the standards is quite good. By connecting ELA standards to David Coleman's anti-classic essay "Cultivating Wonder," showing how Coleman's idea of "thinking" is really a specialized kind of quoting and regurgitation. He breaks down how Coleman-style "close reading" is really about selecting and presenting the "correct" quotes from an excerpt-- not a critical thinking exercise at all. Quoting Dewey:

"Democracy cannot flourish where the chief influences in selecting subject matter of instruction are utilitarian ends narrowly conceived for the masses, and for the higher education of the few, the traditions of a specialized cultivated class. The notion that the 'essentials' of elementary education are the three R's mechanically treated, is based upon ignorance of the essential needed for realization of democratic ideals." We have seen that Common Core curricula and testing require studnets to repeat verbatim passages from a text. Quoting accurately is not thinking; thinking is a more complicated and fluid process that requires experimenting to solve the problem.

Tampio's chapter on math standards shows how Core math is heavily dependent on Core-style reading, and that the requirement to explain does not, in this narrow testing environment, prove that students understand anything:

Beales and Garelick argue that writing explanations sometimes turns routine problems into "unnecessary and tedious" assignments. They observe that many students first solve the problems in their heads and then write a narrative using "verbalism" they have been taught. It is not that the students now understand how their mathematical minds work; it is that they can sufficiently repeat the words that the teacher has told them they need to do if they want a good grade.

Step by step, Tampio leads us through the various standards (some more controversial than others)to a conclusion. National standards fans may argue that we can certainly agree on a minimum set of national standards that all students need to be ready for college and career. Except that, of course, we can't. "Reasonable people disagree over how to teach literacy, numeracy, science, history and sexual health." 

What Tampio provides here is the capstone to the argument that many of us make, only when education guys like moi argue against national standards, we end up conclude with sputterings about, "Well, that's just not how education is supposed to work. That's not what it's supposed to be." Which I believe with all my heart and soul, but also recognize as a fuzzy conclusion to the argument. But Tampio brings us back the threat to democracy(ish) that such standards represent.

In our country, we are witnessing powerful people granting themselves the right to decide how nearly all American children are educated. And many parents, teachers, and educators, including those in historically disadvantaged communities, are saying no to top-down, standards-based reform. People want a say in what and how the local schools teach children.

The book is brief, pithy, to-the-point and well-focused, making it a great gift for your civilian friend who wants a quick, accessible explanation of what all the fuss is about. Since it's a fuss, you may disagree with some of it (I'm solidly in the anti-national standards camp, but I know reasonable people who aren't). For those of us who are already familiar with the fuss, it's a good exercise in organizing and explaining what exactly is wrong with the national standards movement and why it's not just a bad way to run an education system, but a bad way to run a democratic(ish) society. 

Another Bad Personalized Pitch

I am running out of clever titles for this sort of piece, but the sheer number of investor pitches for personalized [sic] education require me to stretch. While these may seem a bit redundant, I think it's important that we see just how many versions of this same bad pitch are out there. This is why bad policy persists-- because a whole bunch of people have convinced themselves the bad policy will make them rich.

Say hello to EVC Ventures, a $50 million Chicago-based Venture Capital fund focused globally on early-stage startups. Or, as their website listing puts it, "where start-ups become unicorns." One of their portfolios is Ed Tech, which explains why managing partner Anjil Jain is in Entrepreneur today, pitching Personalized [sic] Learning as the next bit of awesomeness. She graduated from the Horace Mann school and has a BA in Anthropology from Columbia University. She's an investment person, not an educator.

The headline is "Are You Integrating Personalized Learning Into Your Curriculum?" which seems to assume that school superintendents and curriculum planners are big readers of Entrepreneur India. But the subheading makes big, important promises-- "Personalized learning with the help of Artificial Intelligence will change the Education System." It's possible that we're trying to sell education to companies' in house training programs.

Here's the very first paragraph:

Well, a school is a place we all hold as a dear memory; however, there were also days when school seemed redundant with the same old classroom instructions, lectures, books, and other such activities. With each new day, education is taking an extra step to kill that redundancy and promote a more personalized experience for their students.

Ah, yes. Books and other such activities. And redundancy. And one more critique of public school classrooms as they were in 1962. Do we want to kill redundancy? Because repetition is a really useful learning tool. But let's not tarry too long at this first graph, because Jain is just getting warmed up.

As the old school routine became more superfluous, education needed a change for accessibility through transformative technology and personalized learning secures a good place for the same.

It is, as one colleague, observed, as if Betsy DeVos was being translated by an AI.

What else can be more fitting than the ideal blend of technological betterments and the need for educational advancements? Where traditional tactics take a step back in the progressive world, advancements like AI and data analytics take the lead and stay up front to show the demanded growth.

What is the ideal blend? That's one of the many specific areas that Anjl is not going to approach at all. She will, however,  quote "a report" that 16% of jobs will be lost to AI and tech over the next decade (she appears to be quoting a market research report from Forrester). AI and data analyrtics "are all set to show miracles to the world" and "prove their mettle in the education industry." And the hits just keep on coming:

Helping students at their own pace is one of the prerequisites an educational institution must focus on. Notwithstanding, the very task is not as simple as it sounds. Howbeit, AI comes to the rescue in this scenario by personalizing the learning experience for every student. This all is possible with the combined help of data analytics and AI. Where data analytics helps in gathering and presenting the behavioral as well as learning curves of the students, AI helps the students by putting emphasis on the topics they need help with. Teachers can work as a helping hand to guide the students whenever they feel the need of the additional support.

Slog through the tortured prose (yes, "howbeit" is a word, albeit an archaic one) and you see the usual promises. Students learn at their own pace. Data is collected for both academic and behavioral analysis. Teachers are sidelined. How does any of this work? Well, you know-- AI and data and magical fairy dust.

But there's good news for teachers as well.

Grading every individual is not a sweat task for the teachers anymore.

Well, thank goodness, because I have all the sweat tasks I can handle. But AI and data analytics will grade the tests. In fact, they will even generate "performance-based tests" (check one more item off the buzzword list).

The world is changing and I believe, no student is ready for an average learning experience. Every business, be it the one leading in the industry or the one, which just started talking business, is trying to lure the students around the world with their provision of enhanced learning experiences.

Want some explanation of how this could actually work? Too bad-- the end of the article is almost here, and we still have some buzzwords to work in:

Students of today won't be satisfied if you provide them with the traditional learning setups, like a classroom and a teacher reading through the notes. They want the incorporation of techniques like adaptive learning, digital courseware, and almost any technology that can help them learn as per their learning curve.

Yes, who wants learning in a stupid classroom with some teacher just, you know, teaching stuff. Hey, I can scratch off "adaptive learning" and "digital courseware" now! Let's wind up for the big finish:

Every student is unique and has a different pace of learning, personalized learning will allow students to accelerate at their own pace. The main reason why personalized learning has become such as important part of the higher education system is because of its assessment-driven features, showcasing academic advancements from time spent in a classroom to competencies mastered with experiences. There's no one size fits all in the education space. Now the question is; have you implemented this yet?

A nod to micro-competencies and the not-one-size-fits-all of what is most likely a one-size-fits-all software solution.

"Data analytics" appears eight times in this piece; "AI" appears fifteen times. An explanation of exactly what those are purported to be, or exactly how they would help anyone learn anything-- that appears zero times. Just a repetition of these and other buzzwords like a magic incantation intended to conjure up.... well, what? Investor money, I suppose. What hasn't happened here, of course, is any attempt by the investment firm to actually study up on education  history, the background or application of personalized [sic] learning, or the actual practical wisdom of employing (or defining) such a system. What hasn't happened here is any attempt to acquire understanding any deeper than a shallow pile of buzzwords. I guess all of that would have been too much of a sweat task.