Space

By the end of the day, I will not have a classroom.

I have one more duty to complete (I'm basically the stage manager of graduation on Sunday), but today is the last regular school day of my career. I'll scrub my classroom of every last trace of me, then hand over the keys and go home.

Of all the retirement moments that I've had to wrap my head around, this is turning out to be one of the tougher ones. Because I'll no longer a classroom, a teacher space of my own.

We probably should talk about space more often in education, because if there's one thing nobody in a school has, it's personal space. Teachers talk about closing the door and doing their jobs, as if that would somehow create a private space, but when a teacher closes the door, she's shut herself in the room with a whole batch of students.

Personal space, often defined by walls or even partitions, is a major status marker in most workplaces. It just doesn't come up often in education because almost nobody has any. Administrators get offices. Guidance counselors and other staff that require privacy for the students they work with get offices. Teachers get a desk. In a classroom, that they share with students. When teachers are forced to carry their stuff from room to room on a cart, that marks them clearly as the bottom of the food chain.

I've often argued, only half-jokingly, that districts could get away with lower pay for teachers if they gave each teacher an office-- even a cubicle-defined space.

Our lack of private and personal space is partly about being accessible to our students. Teachers aren't supposed to be able to say to students, literally or figuratively, "Go away. I'm not available to talk to you right now."

But it's also one more not-very-subtle way that teachers are de-adulated, treated like children, and put in a less-than power position in schools. It's one more signal-- "You are not in control and you don't have the real power here." Teachers try to fight back by bringing in objects, putting up decorations, even window treatments, to mark our territory as our own. But the smartest teacher knows better than to put something she really values in her classroom where it's vulnerable to any errant student or to any of the many, many people who have ready access to the room. Our district once employed a principal who, after teachers had left for the day, enter their rooms and check through the contents of their desks. She wasn't trying to catch anybody misbehaving-- she just wanted them to remember that there was not one inch of space in the room that they could call their own. In some districts, teachers will not be able to work in their rooms over the summer because they won't be allowed to keep their keys-- another way that districts hammer home that teachers are just guests in the building, but the space is not theirs.

It is one of the things that separates teachers from other professionals. Doctors have offices. Lawyers have offices. Teachers do not.

And yet we get attached to the little space we're given, enough that I actually feel a pang that I will no longer have a designated personal space in this building. Time to move "create a home office" up the retirement to-do list.

Always

We use the word "always" a great deal, and we're frequently wrong.

We say "we always eat chickpeas at Christmas" or "we always eat cheese for breakfast" or "we always set our keys on the ottoman." None of that is true, because as human beings, we don't "always" do anything. We are finite beings, and everything we do, we do a finite number of times. When you say, "We always did X when we were kids," you're really stretching things, because you weren't a kid for very long, and everything you did, you did a very countable number of times.

That may be why "always" is so easily used in school. Here's the transformation of a program or practice in school:

1st year: That crazy new thing we're trying.
2nd year: That new thing we did last year.
3rd year: That thing we usually do.
4th year: This thing is pretty much a tradition.
5th year: We have always done it this way forever.

As the Designated Old Fart in my building, this was one of my basic functions-- you tell me the traditional way we do some thing, and I'll tell you when we started doing it and why that seemed like a good idea at the time. That's the kind of institutional knowledge you lose when DOFs like me retire.

I suspect there's a certain comfort in talking about things we always do; it's another one of the ways we paper over the limits of mortality. But we don't always do anything. Some things we barely do a few dozen times. But we haven't always done them, and at some point, we shall stop doing them.

So anyone who says that we have always done a certain thing a certain way in public schools is just full of it. There's a whole trash heap somewhere piled high with things we used to do and no longer bother with (I just came across an old lesson I used to teach on how to use the Readers Guide to Periodical Literature). Waiting to go onto that heap is another mountain of practices that we currently think are indispensable. That sits right next to the stack of things that we're doing this year because we did them last year.

It's not that I don't appreciate the value of history and tradition and the tests that only time can administer. Hell, shortly I'm going to leave to play in a concert with a 162-year-old town band. But we have to be careful that we don't allow the shine of past practice to hide a hollowness, and because that shine fools lots of folks, we have to be careful about what we let acquire it.

This is one of my criticism of charter schools-- by trying to claim the mantle of "public" schools, they are trying to appropriate the shine and glamour of a tradition that they are not part of.  Better they should just admit that they are something else and sink or swim on their merits.

And this is one of my criticisms of public schools-- that we too often get caught up in comfortable ruts.

It's important to remember that time is fleeting and fleeing. Our students may talk about what they always do, but whether we're talking final exams or asking a person to prom or celebrating the first day of school, our high school students only do those things four time. Four times! Each one a bit different. Each one unique.

The other problem with "always" is that it lulls us into believing that we have a million chances to do some things, to get some things right. Since this is always happening in an unbroken string that leads over the horizon, we have plenty of chances to get it right the next time, or even just pay attention the next time. We don't. This thing won't always happen. In fact, as far as you know, it may have just happened for the very last time (which is not always a bad thing).

I'm not suggesting that we should load students down with the heavy knowledge of their terrible mortality (though if you don't think some aren't already carrying that weight, you aren't paying attention). But if we carried that weight a bit for mindfully ourselves, perhaps we would be less inclined to waste their time (or ours), and we might better model an appreciation for life that would color their own.

Every day, every moment, one thing is certain-- we won't always be here, in this place, with these people, doing this work, walking through these moments. None of it will always be here. Breathe, Pay attention.

PA: Pushing Super Vouchers Again

Some Pennsylvania legislators are bound and determined to sell vouchers to the state-- and not just regular vouchers, but super-duper awesome vouchers, complete with poison pill for public schools.

Wait? Isn't This Old News

Well, yes, it kind of is. The bill is SB 2, Education Savings Accounts for Underperforming Schools, and it has been trapped in the legislature's (Anti-)Education committee for a while. It was up for a vote last October when it was still a terrible idea, but it failed, once again, to get out of committee.

But you know the old saying-- when life gives you lemons, trade them for pop-tarts. Erie County GOP Senator Dan Laughlin has been a staunch opponent of the bill and the one vote that kept SB 2 from making it out of commitee; this is not surprising, has Erie public schools are a good case study in how school choice and bad policy can gut a public school system. But in December, Laughlin switched to the Community, Economic and Recreational Development Committee, and he was replaced by GOP Senator Rich Alloway.

Alloway is his own kind of special. Recently he came out in favor Armed Volunteer Civilian Militias to "harden" schools and prevent shootings. Because any shmoe off the street who wants to walk around schools with a gun will be a big help.

Oh-- and Alloway is one of the co-sponsors or SB 2. Which explains why it has now made it out of committee and will come before the Pennsylvania senate in the not-too-distant future.

What's Super-Duper About It?

Vouchers are a policy idea that will not die; let's just give every student a check and let them enroll at whatever school they want to (and let's not talk about the fact that they don't really get to decide because top private schools are expensive and all private schools are free to accept students or not for whatever reason).

But many reformsters see another end game. Why bother with school at all? Let students purchase an English class from one vendor and a math class from another. Get history lessons on line paid for by your educational voucher card account.

ESAs make that splintered version of "education" possible. Instead of saying, "Here's a tuition voucher to pay your way to the school of your choice," the state says, "Here's a card pre-loaded with your education account money. Spend your special edu-bucks however you want to."

What Exactly Is In The Bill?

SB 2 is a measly sixteen pages; I'll read it so you don't have to, but you could read it yourself easily enough. There has been some fiddling with the bill since it first shambled into the light of day, and most of the fiddling is not major stuff. But here are some highlights.

Some Fun Definition Stuff

I always enjoy the definitions portion of bills. Okay, not really, but it's an interesting place to see some assumptions laid out.

For instance, "low achieving public school" is a school that ranks in the lower 15% of PA schools. This is great for voucher fans, because even if every school in Pennsylvania was super-awesome, there would still be a lower 15%.

Incidentally, that 15% is measured now not on the annual assessment, but on the annual state achievement test-- which means we now have a new definition of what the PSSA and Keystones are supposed to be (spoiler alert-- they aren't really achievement tests). The law also allows other tests that the state may later foist on schools will count.

The bill also specifies that the lower 15% of public schools will not include charter schools, cyber-charters, or vocational technical schools. That's important for reformsters because just one page later, the definition of "public school" is "a school district, charter school, cyber charter school, regional charter school, intermediate unit or a vocational-technical school." In other words, the law enshrines what we've seen frequently with charters-- they are public schools when it suits them to be, and not
public schools when it suits them not to be.

Who Can Play

One of the problems with many voucher systems is that they funnel tax dollars to private schools via students who were never in the public system to begin with. In other words, vouchers could bed law on Tuesday and on Wednesday, millions of dollars would be sucked out of public school systems without the movement of a single student. Every student who was already in private school anyway would suddenly get a state subsidy.

The newest version of the bill tries to clamp down on that a bit. Previously your child was not eligible for an ESA unless they had spent at least one semester in public school ever. Now that student must spend at least a semester in public school "preceding the establishment of an education savings account."

One fun detail-- once you are in the ESA system, it follows you wherever you go. If you move to a new district area, you still get your edu-bucks, only now they're taken from a school that wasn't even "failing." As I read it, this has two troubling implications. Imagine these scenarios.

Pat attended a "failing" elementary school, so Pat's family signed up for edu-bucks (which came out of the "failing" school's budget. When Pat grew up, it was time to go to the district middle school-- which was NOT failing. But they will still lose the money associated with Pat, who can continue to grab vouchers.

Wobblebog High had a bad couple of test years and lost a few dozen students (and a half million dollars) to some cyber charters and other edu-scammers. Now WH has turned itself around. But it doesn't matter. Those few dozen students get to stay in the voucher system, and WH still has to contend with the hole in their budget.

What You Can Spend Your Edu-bucks On

This hasn't changed. Edu-bucks can be spent on

1) Tuition and fees charged by any school

2) Textbooks or uniforms. Do I suddenly sense many private schools getting interested in uniforms?

3) Fees for tutoring or "other teaching services."

4) Fees to take a "nationally norm-referenced test." So edu-bucks for SAT.

5) Fees for purchasing a curriculum or instructional materials required to administer same. So edu-bucks can finance your homeschooling. Or your cyber-math class.

6) Special services for students with special needs. I have a bad feeling about this. "Too bad if your child isn't getting necessary and mandated services-- we gave you a voucher and if you screwed it up, well, we've done our part. You're on your own."

7) Other valid educational expenses approved by the department. So, you know, depending on the department's occupants, pretty much whatever.

A Few Guardrails, Sort Of

There are some restrictions. A private school can't be caught giving kickbacks to parents, and they can't be caught charging voucher families more than they charge others.

And there's a whole section about audits and penalties if you get caught trying to game this system.

However, there are also specific requirements that the edu-bucks come with no strings attached. "No commonwealth agency may regulate the education program of a participating entity that accepts a payment from an education savings account..." The program does not "expand the regulatory authority of the State." So the state is specifically forbidden to hold edu-buck funded schools to the laws and regulations that govern public schools.

This has always been a huge problem with ESAs-- deliberate zero oversight. Your tax dollars could be funding a white supremacy curriculum or a flying spaghetti monster religious school and you would not know and the state would not say "Hey, wait a minute!" to the education provider.

In fact, no edu-buck accepting school or program can be required to alter their "creed, practices, admissions policy or curriculum to accept school age children " whose parents have edu-bucks in hand. In other words, as some of us keep saying, this is not a school choice program at all, because the choice ultimately rests with the school, which can reject your child for being the wrong race, the wrong religion, the wrong gender orientation, or for having special needs of any kind.

ESAs allow public dollars collected from taxpayers to be used to discriminate without restraint against some of those same taxpayers. That's not okay.

So The Problems Are...?

A lack of oversight. If a family decided to spend ESA money on an X-Box, is there any agency that would 1) notice they were doing it and 2) tell them not to? The amount of oversight required for such a program would be huge-- unless you just wanted to hand over all those taxpayer dollars and not make any attempt to check up on them.

Enshrining discrimination. The law is clear-- if you're running, say, a segregation academy, and you want to hoover up some of that sweet taxpayer cash, the government is expressly forbidden to tell you that you have to stop discriminating first. The same is true if you are running Flat Earth Elementary School-- no gummint agency is allowed to tell you that you have to shape up and stop teaching falsehoods if you want to get your taxpayer dollars.

No real choice. Even if you sincerely believe in the power of choice to improve education, this is not choice. Just because you have a fistful of edu-bucks, that doesn't mean that any school has to accept your student. Students will not choose schools; schools will choose students.

The primary beneficiaries will be people who were doing just fine. No poor families are going to get their children into Fancypants Prep with a voucher that pays only a fraction of the tuition costs.

The further destruction of public education. Yes, this will draw money away from the support of public education (you know-- the place where the vast majority of students go to get an education), and that financial gutting is bad. But ESAs also set the stage for the destruction of the very idea of school, replacing an important public institution with an assortment of vendors hawking various edu-flavored mini-competency badges.

And ESAs also set the stage for government abdicating its responsibility for providing a decent education for all students. Caveat emptor, baby-- we gave you a voucher and if somehow that didn't end up with a decent education for your kid because you were scammed or defrauded or just unable to navigate a confusing marketplace, well, hey, that's your problem. The state's responsibility ended when it handed you your stack of edu-bucks. Of course, in such a system, the wealthy will do just fine, secure on a cushion of their own wealth. It's the poor, with their tiny margin for economic error, who will suffer. But hey-- we gave them a voucher.

What To Do?

PA SB 2 is headed for the Senate floor in Harrisburg. You need to locate your senator and explain to him why this bill is a bad idea. Get your friends and neighbors to also explain. This really needs to not be a law. This is a bad idea; the assault on public education should bother progressives, and conservatives should be bothered by a bill that proposes using taxpayer dollars with no accountability in sight.

P.S. If someone is in agreement that this is a lousy idea for a law, you might note that Governor Tom Wolf has promised to veto it, and the Governor Wanna-be Scott Wagner is a co-sponsor.

Testing with Purpose

I've spent the last week buried in end-of-year exams, which for us came right on the heels of the Keystone Exams, Pennsylvania's version of the Common Core Big Standardized Tests. For me, it's a pretty blunt reminder of how tests are supposed to work, and how the BS Tests fail to meet that standard.

A good test is part of the learning process.

A good test does not require education to stop while we measure one thing or another. A good assessment, well-written and properly timed, helps the students bring their learning (so far) into some sort of crystallized relief. The learning process is like collecting a bunch of books and stacking them up in the center of the room and building some shelving on the wall. A good assessment consists of getting those books organized and neatly place on the shelves.

A good assessment involves applying the skills and knowledge acquired-- not rooting through stacks for some detail from some page. A good assessment is as close as possible to a real and authentic task. For instance, the best assessment of writing skills involves writing something-- not answering a bunch of multiple choice questions about made-up faux writing scenarios, or writing some faux essay so strictly formulated that all "correct" versions would be nearly identical.

The end goal for most courses involves thinking-- thinking about the content, thinking about the ways it fits together, thinking about the ways that the information can be organized and worked within that discipline. Thinking is the great in-measurable, but it is also the end goal of most courses, and so we end up back at writing as the closest possible authentic assessor of what we're really after. (Multiple choice tests almost never measure thinking, critical or otherwise.) And the best writing assessments are built to match the ebb and flow of the course itself.

In my 11th grade Honors English class, I assign two massive take-home essays every year. Because the literature portion of the course is organized around the study of American literature through five different literary periods and across an assortment of topics, a typical year's final might include "Trace one of the following topics through the five literary periods we studied, showing how each movement handled the topic and providing examples from works of the period" or "Pick a fairy tale and rewrite it five times, as it would be written by an author of each period we studied." But through student questions and curiosity and engagement and just the odd paths that we sometimes wander down, I have also given this question as a final essay: What is the meaning of life? Explain and discuss.

I don't object to all objective tests. In addition to my big honking essay tests, I give an in-class mostly matching test that requires the students to recognize works of literature from short clues ("his sister was dead, but she got better" = "Fall of the House of Usher") and even such pedestrian tasks as matching a work with its author. My goal, at a minimum, is to have them finish the year by thinking, "Damn, but I read a lot of stuff this year" and at a maximum to show that they have some rudimentary content under control. But even here, the clues that I give are based on how we discussed the work in class and not my own selection of some piddly detail.

In the end, I'd argue that no good assessment is divorced from the entire learning process that led up o it nor from the end goals and purposes of that unit for the student. The BS Tests are divorced from both. They have nothing to do with the organic natural flow of education in the classroom and were written with no knowledge of or regard for that group. Nor do they promise any sort of culminating learning activity for the students, but instead are intended to generate some sort of data for a disconnected third party.

It's as if a basketball team, after practicing for a month, didn't wrap up that work with an actual game, but instead took a multipole choice test about characteristics of basketballs, hoops, and shoes. It's as if a band or chorus, after rehearsing music for a month, did not put the final capstone of a performance on their learning, but instead sat down at computers to take a point-and-click test about the bore size of a trombone and the average range of sopranos.

A good final assessment is the icing on the cake, the lightbulb over the head, the victory lap around the track that has been mastered. The BS Tests are none of these things, but instead are a collection of pointless tasks doled out by faceless bean counters for purposes known only to far off bureaucrats. When students say that these tests are pointless (and they do, all the time), they aren't saying "this isn't even part of my grade" so much as they're saying, "this doesn't add anything to my education." When legislators say these tests are pointless (as they do every time they artificially attach stakes to them in an attempt to make them seem Important), they admit that they are wasting a lot of money and a huge amount of time.

ICYMI: Primitive Blogging Edition

The only functioning device I have to my name is my phone (which won't hold a charge) and my work computer (which is, you know, at work). And it's finals time, and final grade time. In recognition of my outstanding whining, my wife has loaned me her laptop for a bit. My second try at a new functioning desktop is due this week; I don't know what I'm going to do about the tablet. Enough about my over-privileged first world problems-- I should be back to normal action soon. But in the meantime, here's some reading for you from tis week.

What They Said Before and What They Are Saying Now

Carol Buris takes a look at what some reformsters used to say about NAEP scores (you know-- the stagnant ones) and what they have to say now.

Letter From an Inner City Classroom

Another great piece from Jose Wilson

Discovering what other people are for

Nobody chronicles the detailed yet deep lives of littles like Seattle's Teacher Tom. Another great piece about a simple but profound moment.

TN Not Ready

Tennessee continues to be a sting disaster year after year. Mary Holden is there to chronicle the mess.

How being part of a house within a school helps students gain a sense of belonging

A cool idea explored here.

Five Basic Things DevOs Wouldn't or Couldn't Answer

The lowlights from DeVos's latest visit to the hill

Teacher Pay

Time magazine takes a look at how low pay is draining some of the best teachers out of the classroom

There is no dignity in teaching

This is an absolutely heartbreaking look at one teacher being eaten up by the systemm

Debunking the Nreoliberal Fantasy

Another writer catches on to the neoliberal baloney plaguing education.

DHS Loses 1500 Children

A deeply troubling story. Yes, we're dragging one-year-olds away from their parents. Yes, we are warehousing them in shameful conditions. Yes, we have lost some of them. And yes, we have handed some over to human traffickers. And yes-- we're claiming we aren't legally responsible. Time to call your Congressperson.

Legacy

I walked into this building as a seventh grader in 1969. I'll walk out of it as a retiree in less than two weeks.

You get asked a lot of questions when you retire, many of which have the unintended consequence of poking you right in the feels. (I'm definitely not  crying at least once a day, but if I did, I would at least manage to do it when I'm not in front of anybody.) Some are pretty basic (what are you going to do with that filing cabinet) and some dig a little deeper, like the comments about my legacy. Some folks have even offered to watch after my legacy, to preserve it, and I just don't have the heart to tell them that I have no legacy in this building.

I'm the longest-serving member of the current faculty, which means that I've seen a lot of people head out the door, and I know exactly what kind of mark they leave behind them.

Teachers are not billionaires or politicians. We don't generally get to build giant structures and slap our own names on them in hopes that some day we will leave a mark behind us. We don't generally get honored with statues and monuments, not even in a broad Tomb of the Unknown Teacher way, let alone as specific individuals. Nobody is out there carving his third grade teacher's face into the side of a mountain.

A teacher in a school is like a post driven deep into the bed of a river. The current bends around her; maybe it cuts into the bank and certainly it carries river traffic along paths affected by that post. Even the bed of the river will be cut and shaped by the current as it bends around that post. People even start to navigate by the post, as if it's a permanent part of the river.

But something happens when the post is one day removed.

Maybe folks are so impressed by the post that they put a special commemorative marker in place of the post. Maybe some big boulders rolled into place against the post and stay in place long after the post is gone, even when folks don't remember how they ended up there.

But mostly there's a momentary swirl of dirt, a quick rush of water and then, after a brief moment of time, the river bed is smooth again and the river flows as if there was never any post at all.

I don't imagine I will leave much of legacy here, and what little there is will be worn away over time, and that's okay. I do have a legacy, but to see it, you have to look downstream.

I figure that I've worked with, roughly, 5,000 students. Some of them are still carrying around bits of skill or knowledge that I passed on to them, or parts of their lives that grew out of something I passed on to them. They grew up to be living, breathing, growing, active men and women who worked at finding how to be their best selves, how to be fully human in the world. Undoubtedly some of those students didn't get much out of being in my class, and some have less-than-positive memories of me, but I have to believe that some got something out of their time in my room.

That's my legacy. People who felt just a little better about reading, or just a little better about writing. Here and there some students who actually pursued writing or teaching as careers. Some students who built a foundation of confidence in an activity. Some I hear from now and then, some I talk to regularly, and some whose lives took them far from here, and I have no idea how their stories have unfolded.

My legacy-- and every teacher's legacy-- is not here in this building. This building is just brick and mortar and rules and procedures and "traditions" that sometimes last less than a decade, all carried out by a constantly-changing cast of educators and students. Names and awards are created, but they carry on names even as the person whose name it is is forgotten. My legacy-- and every teacher's legacy-- is out in the world, in those students who passed through this building, and it's not for anyone to "preserve" because it has a life of its own-- as it should.

If I can switch metaphors for a moment-- as teachers, our job is to light a fire, to pass along a flame. Passing on a flame is a curious activity-- the new flame is not a piece of the old one, but its own new thing, with its own new life, even as the old fire continues to burn. Spreading a flame multiplies it, but the new flame is not shaped or controlled by the old one.

If I walk back into this building ten years from now, I don't imagine that I'll find anything to indicate that I was ever here. But, "God help and forgive me, I wanna build something that's gonna outlive me." Teaching has always let me do that-- but not here, not in this building. Not in this stiff structure of unliving steel and stone. Out there in the world, where the water carries us to the sea, new fires spring up to illuminate the world, and human beings full of life and breath roam and grow. If we're going to have a legacy, that's where it will be.

Betsy DeVos Does Not Owe You a Damned Explanation

There are so many moments from the nearly four hours that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos spent chatting with some Congresspersons today, but as a dedicated DeVos watcher, this three minute clip is captivating:



God bless Bobby Scott for not actually throwing something at her.

But I think Splinter (the only place I could find this clip (if for some reason you can't play it, here's a good recap) has made a  critical mistake which perpetuates a mistake people keep making.

I'm having so much fun. It's like teasing a cat with a laser pointer.

It is easy to watch DeVos robotically repeat variations on "If follows the law" and imagine that she is just being obtuse or maybe trying to hide ignorance, but as I have said repeatedly, I do not believe DeVos is a dope.

So you may watch this and think the underlying message from DeVos is "I don't know what I'm doing" or "I haven't done my homework" or "I don't really understand what I'm being asked." But I think the underlying message is something else entirely--

"I don't owe you a damned word of explanation for anything."

"First of all, I'm anointed by God. I'm on a literal mission from the Creator of the Universe, so I answer to a much higher power than a bunch of suits stuffed with cheap-ass lobbyist pocket change.So I don't answer your question. So what? Are you going to scowl at me? Because my brother is Eric Frickin' Prince who kills guys like you-- literally kills guys like you-- before breakfast, and spends his afternoon torturing information out of dangerous men. You think he hasn't given me a few pointers over Thanksgiving dinner? You think I'm not geared up to resist questioning by guys whose most enhanced interrogation technique is Asking The Same Thing Repeatedly With an Annoyed Face?"

"See this smile? It's the smile of someone who has so much money that I don't need anybody else's help. It's the smile of someone who's such tight besties with Jesus that I don't need anybody else's approval."

"Don't know education? I know exactly what I want to do and I know exactly how much of an answer I plan to give you and if you don't like it-- tough. I'm within the letter of the law, and you can't touch me, and if you want to gaze disapprovingly, go right ahead. When I'm relaxing at the right hand of God the Father and you are roasting in Hell, this little chat isn't going to mean a damn thing."

Okay, I may be expanding and paraphrasing a bit. But look at the patented DeVos smirk. This woman knows exactly what she's doing, and she knows that she doesn't have to explain any of it to us plebes or our elected representatives.