Betsy DeVos Lets Down Her Hair

You probably saw the quote from Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos equating US public education with Soviet East Germany. That was a good headline (and great clickbait), but it's worth it to go and take a look at the full context of that quote. This will be long, but I can't help it-- I find strolling through the inside of Betsy DeVos's head kind of fascinating. I'd love to have her come join me at the local coffee shop for an afternoon.

The occasion of the speech was a presentation to Young America's Foundation at the Reagan Ranch Center. Young America's Foundation was founded in 1969, and it is as conservative as can be-- it is one of the co-founders and forces behind the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). The organization bought the Reagan ranch "Rancho Del Cielo" in 1998 with the help of $10 million from Richard and Helen DeVos (Betsy's parent-in-laws).

So on this occasion DeVos was very much among her people, and we've seen in the past that these are the occasions on which she tends to let down her hair, stop playing to a wider audience, and let's her plutocrat flag fly.

She opens with a paean to YAF and Reagan, but she actually calls back to the group Young Americans for Freedom, founded 1959ish with a series of conversations in William F. Buckley's living room about what it means to be a conservative, resulting in the Sharon Statement (Young Americans for Freedom were eventually absorbed by Young America's Foundation) . That's a complicated topic on its own, as it represented a bit of a break with conservative thought at the time (which was struggling a bit with the not-terribly-popular Richard Nixon in the White House). The ideas of the Sharon Statement were carried into the 80s when all those college radicals grew up-- political freedom is inseparable from economic freedom, government should be limited and the Constitution revered, free market is best of all, communism must be defeated, and, my favorite, individual freedom and the right to govern come from God. If it has always seemed to you that folks like DeVos believe in a divine right of rule by rich free marketeers-- well, that didn't come from nowhere.

DeVos offers her own paraphrase, including that the free market produces the most prosperity and lifts the most people out of poverty. Curiously, "communism must be defeated" becomes "America must always win."

Reagan, she asserts, embodied these principles more than anybody, and she admires and tries to emulate his "sunny demeanor and eternal optimism." She locates Reagan in history much as I would expect someone of my generation (DeVos and I are about the same age). When we were teens, the US was still drafting young men to go to Vietnam for a war that looked more and more like a losing clusterflap. Nixon went to China and then blew up his Presidency in a scandal that seems quaint by modern standards. We headed off to college under Gerald Ford, who seemed like a nice guy who would just keep things quiet, and he was followed by Jimmy Carter who, God bless him, is a far better former President than he was a President. Carter was an engineer and a DC outsider, and couldn't get a damn thing done. The era of cheap gas ended, and government didn't fix it-- they just tried to manage it with rationing plans. And other countries around the world made us look like powerless chumps, from oil rich nations to the Iranians who held our people hostage. What we should have been learning was that the world was more complicated than we'd thought, but mostly the country just fell into an emotional slump.

DeVos says, "The malaise was real, but it didn't develop overnight," and I wonder if her young audience was puzzled by that, but my generation recognizes the reference to Jimmy Carter's speech about at US "crisis of confidence." That was the background against which Reagan, who had failed miserably in previous attempts, ran a successful Presidential campaign- oozing confidence and can-do and absolutely mastering the art of convincing the new brand of Sharon Statement conservatives that he was giving them what they wanted, when in fact if Reagan appeared today he would be driven out of the GOP for his flabby RINO policies. But that's a conversation for another day. Here's the part that DeVos still responds to-- and which shows one of the few connecting lines between Reagan and Trump:

The difference between East and West Germany—between tyranny and freedom—was stark. Communists, however, had conned too many in the West into thinking that there was no difference. That a nation without God was just as valid as one Nation under God. That we’d best learn to “coexist.” That they would never be defeated.

But Reagan said, no. “We win, they lose.”

She points to the rubble of the Berlin Wall as a sign of Reaganesque triumph, and that sets uip her pivot. There's another wall that needs to be torn down, old and "devastating" to those who live on the wrong side of it. It's a wall in education that keeps too many students from learning.

It separates wealthy, powerful, or well-connected students from those who aren’t wealthy, powerful, or well-connected. They have about as much education freedom in America today as East Germans had freedom to do anything back then.

Too many students are up against another “empire”—governments, unions, associations of this, and organizations of that. It’s an education cabal that protects the status quo at the expense of just about everyone else.

This is half of a good analogy. She is correct about the separation between the wealthy well-connected and those who are not. But her preferred solution-- vouchers and choice-- does not destroy the wall. It does not send resources to the people living on the non-wealthy side of the wall. Vouchers give a select few permission to travel over the wall. Charter choice systems allow people from the wealthy side of the wall to go set up schools on the poor side-- again, for a select few. Voucher and choice are a bad solution precisely because they don't break the wall down or bring equity to life on the two sides of the wall.

The status quo problem here is not the evil empire. It's the wall, erected by the wealthy to make sure that everyone else on the other side stays in their proper place. And vouchers and choice are lousy solutions precisely because they are "solutions" crafted so as not to disturb the status quo of that wall of wealth.

But DeVos instead is going to paint pretty much everyone as part of an evil cabal.

She invokes A Nation at Risk, the report that the Reagan administration ginned up to create a sense of crisis about education. And next she moves on to the price tag.

We've spent a trillion dollars at the federal level on education. What did we get for it? An unnamed Stanford and Harvard study, she says, shows that for fifty years "all the additional spending did nothing to improve the gulf in student achievement between those with freedom and those without." Even without specifics, this is meaningless-- the measure is unclear but probably a standardized test, and a thousand variables are also in play, particularly if you understand that "freedom" here mostly means "money."

But DeVos wants to renew the call-- "we are a nation at greater risk." More government is not the solution, "Yet like a broken record, sycophants of 'the system' insist otherwise." (Sycophants of the System sounds positively Agnewesque, but it would make a great band name.) But now DeVos (or her speechwriter) are fully wound up and ready for battle.

Well, our strategy is this: students win, they lose.

What an odd notion-- that teachers and unions and the vast system of people who work in public education with not a great deal of pay are all an evil force that must be defeated, that in order for students to be educated, all these other folks must lose. And really-- lose what? But DeVos is on a roll.

Students are going to win with freedom.

Freedom from government, because DC has a "stranglehold" on America's students, "starting with all the social engineering from the previous administration." This goes straight to the heart of the DeVosian style worldview-- society should have order with people in their proper place, and attempts to mess with that natural order are "social engineering," an attempt to mess with how things are supposed to be. So all those things like an office of civil rights are a bad thing. All those protections that DeVos has rolled back for various groups of non-straight non-white students are, in her mind, an attempt to mess with the natural order of things.

How exactly that is a "stranglehold" on America's students doesn't make much sense unless you mean wealthy white males who are being forced to put up with all these other people who are not in their proper place, or perhaps those no-white non-straight non-male students who are being robbed of their right to prove that they deserve to be with the Betters (or not). For them, I guess, DeVos is going to keep pulling back on "staggering regulatory overreaches" including Title IX. And she's not going to make any new rules ever, because "family is the first school" and the system is supposed to serve them. As always, DeVos will not even pretend to see the issues that might arise when the system, or some portion of it, does not serve a family well. Did a private school refuse to serve the needs of your family because you're black? Don't expect DeVos to start socially engineering things on your behalf.

And then there's this newly minted talking point that reformsters keep pushing:

So, let’s stop and rethink the definition of public education. Today, it’s often defined as one-type of school, funded by taxpayers, controlled by government. But if every student is part of “the public,” then every way and every place a student learns is ultimately of benefit to “the public.” That should be the new definition of public education.

Yes, DeVos isn't going to be making new regulations or "meddling in matters properly left to communities and to families," but she is going to redefine words. By this reasoning, McDonalds is a public restaurant. Public education is facilities that are owned and operated by the public, which serves all the public, and which are accountable to the public.

She's also going to push her Education Freedom Scholarship voucher program. She says it won't create a new federal program or grow the federal government, which I guess comes close to being true if her intention is for the program to operate without any oversight whatsoever. It will of course blow a $5 billion dollar hole in the federal budget, but if we squint and pretend it didn't happen, maybe we can just stick the states with the tab for this.

All students should be free. Multiple pathways. Lifelong learning and freedom are inseparable. And students have many opportunities thanks to an "on-fire economy."

Are you still here? Good-- because DeVos is now going to explain what's wrong with society today. Also, after breezing past the cognitive dissonance that must come from holding images of Reagan and her present boss ("sunny demeanor and eternal optimism" indeed), DeVos will now peg the cognitive dissonance meter:

Learning is the pursuit of truth, but students are often told there is no such thing as truth. Acknowledging it means certain feelings or certain ideas could be wrong. It is much more comfortable to say: “there is no truth. There’s nothing that could challenge what we want to believe.”

But learning isn’t about feeling comfortable. It’s about thinking. And it’s a willingness to engage with any and all ideas—even ones with which you disagree or ones that aren’t your own.

Truth can be pursued, and it can be known. All students need the freedom to learn it.

And people say she's dumb. So there is an absolute Truth and it can be known, but you have to be willing to engage with ideas that you disagree with, but if you know the Truth, why would you? Has DeVos ever shown an inclination to engage with ideas that she disagrees with, or does she prefer to label people with those ideas as a "cabal" and "sycophants of the system"?

And then there's this:

Ultimately, our education freedom agenda is about acknowledging that each of us is ennobled with a unique purpose and unique talents to fulfill it. We all need the freedom to discover and develop our abilities and aspirations—and then, to do something constructive with them… for ourselves, our families, our communities, and for our country.

This doesn't sound bad, but it's important to understand that it's completely consistent with a Bettercrat view of the world-- that each of has a purpose and while my purpose might be to inherit billions of dollars, your purpose might be to polish the hubcaps on my car quietly and without making eye contact with me, and if we all just find our place and know our place and settle comfortably into our place and not try to social engineer our way out of our place, then the world will work smoothly as God wants it to

DeVos wraps it up by evoking Reagan's "city on a hill" which is of course John Winthrop's "city on a hill" which is a primary text for American exceptionalism, the notion that we really are better-- well, at least some of us are. And DeVos has disavowed racism, and that's typical Berttercrat as well-- any person of any race or religion (or at least a couple of them) could turn out to have the Better qualities that let them rise above their place, but they have to have the chance to prove themselves and that means none of that social engineering so that they can prove that they can win playing by our rules (which are, of course, God's rules and the only True correct rules).

And it does come back to winning. Because if you have the Truth, then the people who see things differently must be either stupid or selfishly evil and deliberately pursuing Wrong. So there's no need to talk to them or engage with them or especially try to understand why they see things differently from a different point of view-- you just have to defeat them. And if you are Betsy DeVos, it must seem as if there are oh so many of them, everywhere, all the time, and it must be a great relief to sit in a room with folks who understand the Truth.

OH: Union Reps Fired By Turnaround CEO

Lorain City Schools is one of the three Ohio districts that has been subjected to HB 70, a takeover law that replaces both the school board and the superintendent with a single all-powerful CEO. You can get the background of Lorain's troubles here, and see what has been happening in the fight against HB 70 here.

The short form for Lorain is this: HB 70 is a terrible piece of law, calling for a CEO who is knowledgeable and competent in every single aspect of school management, from teacher assignment to bus schedules, and this super-competent person has to be able to run every aspect of the district while building relationships with all the local folks who are still smarting from having the state strip all of their local power.

Location of my first teaching job

So let's start by accepting that nobody is going to be able to do this job well. But Lorain won some sort of reverse lottery, and got CEO David Hardy, Jr., who is especially not good at this job. Hardy's background is Teach for America and charter schools. I've reached out to someone who worked with him previously, and they suggest that he doesn't take criticism well, nor does he much care for teachers. That's just one person-- but nothing about his history in Lorain suggests otherwise. He has refused to move his family to Lorain, has refused to meet with the elected school board, and has not established positive working relationships with any of Lorain's civic authorities. At one point he told teachers (and the media) that all teachers at some schools would have to re-apply for their jobs. Then a few days later, he had changed his mind.

Hardy has brought in "turnaround principals" and other administrators whose background is also primarily Teach for America. Several turned out to not even have the proper certification for working as building administrators, and in some cases raise serious questions about their qualifications for the job-- the principal hired for the middle school apparently had only a certification to teach preschool through third grade. One parent who was involved in the interview process called the entire hiring procedure "a façade."

Current administrative offices

I've talked to teachers from the district who describe an atmosphere of threats, harassment and intimidation. If you talk about me, I'll sue you. Use Study Island or else. Nobody's going to look at your evaluation-- you have to get on board.

That last one turns out to be true.

This morning's Chronicle-Telegram (a newspaper that has worked overtime to follow the ongoing mess) reports that several members of Lorain's teachers union have been given the ax.

All the teacher affected were non-tenured, and HB 70 gives the CEO the power to hire and fire at will. But there was no hint that this was coming:

First-grade teacher Ashley Krausher is one of the teachers whose contracts were not renewed Wednesday. She said she has taught at Admiral King seven years — two as a student teacher and the past five as a full-time, licensed teacher.

She received an overall rating of “skilled” for this year on May 1 — the second-highest ranking a teacher can receive. Of the two first-grade classrooms at the building, her class was the only one that passed the opinion writing student learning objective, which is meant to measure the effectiveness of a teacher based on student achievement. She said she also passed the state’s Resident Educator Summative Assessment “with flying colors.”

Krausher had actually been recommended for tenure by her principal. This had been her first year as a union building rep.

Union president Jay Pickering told the Chronicle that none of the affected teachers (nobody seems to know exactly how many there are at this point) had received a low rating in their evaluation.

The union has been busy this year-- when you have problems like administrators trashing teachers on social media, random and inconsistent enforcement and rewriting of policy, and all the other problems with having amateur hour in the front office, building reps have a lot of unhappy members to represent. Hardy and his team have been described as having a sense of entitlement, of feeling invincible, of believing that they don't have to answer to anyone-- and that last part is not wrong. The mostly-state-appointed oversight committee (academic distress commission) is supposed to evaluate the CEO regularly, and now, a couple of years in, Hardy still has not been evaluated. Outside of that review, HB 70 says that the all-powerful CEO really doesn't answer to anyone-- another reason the law should go.

At any rate, are folks like that going to take kindly to handling issues raised by the union?

I spoke to another of the teachers who has been non-renewed. Two weeks ago she was given her evaluation (late) and it was fine. A week later she was given her teaching assignment for next year. Last Saturday she filed a grievance regarding the general mess that had been made of her evaluation. On Tuesday, the last day for students, in the final minutes of the day, she was called to the office where she was handed a letter, signed by Hardy, informing her that she would not be renewed.

Amateur hour. Bad Administration 101 teaches that when you want to fire a teacher for some dumb, petty reason, you create some sort of semi-plausible cover story. Nothing has been offered here, other than sending harassing emails about (I swear I am not making this up, and I have no reason to believe the teacher is, either) failing to complete the Bloodborne Pathogens online training and not signing out properly at the end of the year.

The odds that the CEO and his staff will be facing an unfair labor practices charge seem high. Meanwhile, the Ohio Senate needs to decide if they will accept the House's budget language, which includes a complete repeal of HB 70-- including for the cities where it's going on.

Could things get worse in Lorain (where the board declared a state of emergency back in February). They could indeed, because the teachers union contract runs out on July 31 of this year, and David Hardy doesn't strike me as a man with a gift for negotiation. And HB 70 gives him one other power-- the power to declare the district hopeless and then hand it over to charter operators.

Here's some of what Hardy had to say when he went to the capitol to defend HB 70:

I rarely, if ever, directly respond to criticism from angry individuals who have suffered the feeling of accountability and the lack of power to wield their continued oppression on young people and the people care deeply about educating them.

If you want to catch more of his condescension and his sense that he has to come to this frickin' place because these frickin' people are some combination of evil and stupid, there's this TFA profile. But here's the thing. Even if Lorain's former board was the most dysfunctional in the world. Even if Lorain City Schools were a terrible mess, requiring substantive change and redirection. Even if the staff was filled with incompetents who were in education for an easy buck and couldn't care less about the students. Even if all those things were true, this would not be the way to fix it. Hardy and his team are like folks who pull up to a smoking dumpster and decide to fix the dumpster by throwing kerosene on it and then driving over it with a loaded cement mixer. Maybe it had some real problems before. Maybe it didn't. But it sure has problems now.

OH: Do Charters Need The Freedom To Hire Great Teachers?

If there's one thing that charter school advocates never run out of, it's arguments about why charter schools should get to ignore some of the rules of education.

Fordham Institute's blog, Ohio Division, recently ran a piece in this genre, written by Jessica Poiner-- "Give charter schools the freedom to hire great teachers."

Poiner graduated from Baldwin-Wallace University with a BA in English (perfectly nice school--my niece graduated from BW) in  2011, then put in her two Teach for America years in Shelby County, including seven months as a teacher leadership coach (we talk a lot about how five weeks of training don't prepare you for the classroom, but we should talk more about TFA's notion that a year or so in a classroom qualifies you as an educational leader). She put a year in Tennessee's ill-fated Achievement School District. That positioned her to join Fordham as an Education Policy Analyst in 2014, where she's been working since.

Poiner has several parts of her plea for relief of the helpless charter industry.

More Warm Bodies, Please

The foundation of this discussion involves some arcane bits of Ohio teacher certification. One of the less-noted features of ESSA (the newest batch of federal education law) was that it scrapped the "highly qualified" requirement of No Child Left Behind and replaced it with basically whatever the state wanted to define as properly certified. If you go through a traditional teacher prep program, you get a regular certificate and all is hunky dory. But if you came to the classroom through alternative means, you get a long-term substitute license to hold you over until you complete your proper education education (this, in fact, is how I entered the profession forty years ago).

Under NCLB, that long-term sub license was considered, somehow, enough to count a teacher as highly qualified. But under SB 216, the Ohio Department of Ed says your long-term license doesn't count. If you are on your way to a proper certificate, that really shouldn't be a problem. But if you are, say, a Teach for America person who has no intention of actually pursuing a teaching career, it could be an issue. And if you are a charter that depends heavily on TFA and other temps to staff your school, it could be a real issue. According to Poiner, the Ohio budget is poised to fix this by saying basically that charter teachers don't have to be certified.

So Poiner opens her post about how charters need the freedom to hire great teachers by expressing her hope that the state will give charters the freedom to hire people who aren't teachers at all. Poiner cites some bad research (I just don't have time to travel down that rabbit hole right now) to back up the assertion that certification doesn't necessarily matter, and then, referring to the proposed elimination of credential requirements, writes what I have to assume is a Freudian typo-- "there are few reasons why that's a good idea." And I agree-- I can think of no reasons that letting any warm body play teacher would be a good idea, but since she starts to list reasons, I'm guessing she meant "there are A few reasons." Mind you, I am not here to critique her typing-- she'll be a very old typing person by the time she catches up with me in the maladaptive typography department-- I'm just trying to be clear about where she's going.

Autonomy in exchange for accountability

This has always been a great slogan, but I'm not sure how charter advocates in Ohio deliver it with a straight face. Again, not going on a big side trip, but let's pick a single example-- ECOT, the Ohio online charter that went on for years defrauding Ohio taxpayers and using all manner of shenanigans to avoid being held accountable. Or the Horizon chain, which is linked to the Concept chain, allegedly part of the Gulen network of charters.

Yes, Ohio does hold charters to some standards that all states ought to, like state report cards. Ohio does have an automatic closure law that forces charters with too many bad report cards to close-- except that by 2013 it was already obvious that the law was rendered ineffective by its loopholes. Poiner assures us that "persistently low-performing schools don't stick around indefinitely," so, therefor, they should be allowed more hiring "flexibility." After all, she points out, charters can fire teachers quickly, without any of that "due process" baloney, a point that as worth noting as we move on to her next argument...

Competing for talent

A Fordham survey of charter school leaders showed that many struggle to find good teaching candidates, and they blame that on the pay. That's because the state doesn't give them enough money to allow them to offer competitive salaries.

There are a couple of problems with this argument. First, if charters are having trouble finding the money to pay teachers, they might try looking at their administrative budgets. Here, for instance, is the EdVantages non-profit that pays its management team over $400K-- far more than comparable public school superintendents with comparable student loads. This is consistent with study after study after study that shows charters spending more money on administration than a typical public school system-- waaaay more money if you figure it on a cost-per-pupil basis. And then there's all the taxpayer money that charters spend on advertising.

So when Poiner writes "Low teacher pay is a direct result of the state's inequitable charter school funding," she is being disingenuous. Most charters have plenty more money-- they just aren't spending it on teachers.

I'm so old that I can remember when charter school advocates pitched their privatization plans by touting their ability to do more with less. "Charters will save the state and the taxpayers money," they declared. Oh, those were the days. Nowadays, charteristas sing a different tune-- "We should get more money. We deserve more money. We need more money. Give us more money." (I'm paraphrasing.)

But competing for talent isn't all about money. That total lack of job security thing? Not an attractive quality. "We reserve the right to fire you at any time for any reason" is not a competitive recruiting tool in the education world (which may be why over the years there's been so much reform emphasis on trying to force public schools to take the same stance).

Charters are supposed to be a field dominated by hardnosed business people who understand how the free market works, but as with bosses in the private sector, somehow their understanding of free market mechanics stops when it comes to labor costs. If charters want more high quality teachers, they need to make their jobs more appealing-- not just monetarily, but in terms of security and professional respect and autonomy. Charters are notorious in the teacher world for giving staff little or no say in how the school works, or even in how their own classroom will work. "You will do things our way, every day, and follow the script we give you exactly," is, again, not an appealing pitch.

Who is it appealing to? Charter operators, because under- or un-qualified worker bees are cheap. They settle for low pay, lousy benefits, and aren't even thinking about a pension. One big reason that charters would like to be freed from any requirement to hire qualified personnel is the same reason that McBurger joints want the minimum wage to stay low and would absolute fight any requirement that their cooks be actual trained chefs.

Charters have been around long enough to develop a well-earned reputation for being, on the whole, lousy places to work. If charters want to attract better teachers, they will need to address that issue. But Poiner's argument here is that since charters can't attract the really good teachers, they should be given more flexibility in hiring whatever warm bodies they can get their hands on.

Attracting better charter networks

Poiner says gosh, we have some fine charter networks in Ohio, but we need to attract more out-of-state network's too, and that means making Ohio into a "more attractive market." See, now we're not even pretending to talk about education-- we need to get some more of these businesses in here by fixing the rules so that they can make more money.

Two things I notice here. Poiner calls strictly for charter networks. We're past the point of talking mom-and-pop charter schools, and we're past the point of talking about teacher-led charters (no, former TFA temps don't count). It's strictly big business now, and that means the notion that it would be a good idea to have Ohio children educated in a school run by a board that meets in some other state. There is not even an attempt here to paper over the features of charters that opponents object to. Corporate privatization of public education. Loss of local control. It's all good.

The second thing I'll note is that we've made it to the end of this piece, and somehow it has never come up once that Fordham Institute has a financial stake in all of this business. But Fordham is an Ohio charter school authorizer with a whole portfolio of buckeye charter schools. So this whole piece is not unlike an article entitled "More people should receive grants to buy cars" written by a rep from the Ford Motor Company.

Searching for warm bodies

Poiner wraps up with this plea:

To be clear, exempting charters from certification or licensure requirements wouldn’t result in a free for all. Teachers would still need college degrees, be subject to background checks, and, importantly, have to answer for the performance of their students on state tests and report cards. It merely maintains charters’ freedom to hire nontraditional teachers and assign them to a wider range of grade levels and subject areas. 

In other words, please let charters keep hiring TFA temps. As long as the test scores are good, what else matters? What else do the taxpayers of Ohio want from their schools other than good test scores?

Do Ohio charters need the freedom to hire great teachers? Who exactly has taken  that freedom from them? They have made some choices about how to use the taxpayer money they're given, and they've made some choices about the working conditions for professionals in their school, and now they are facing the consequences of those choices-- choices that they freely made. The headline to this piece is an exercise in whiplash irony. What Poiner is arguing for is not the freedom to hire great teachers, but the freedom to hire any kind of warm body they can get their hands on and stick in a classroom, arguing that the charter oversight and accountability that have failed Ohio so far will somehow keep the teacher quality high.

My advice to Ohio charters is the same as it has been to everyone in education whining about a teacher "shortage"-- if you want to hire good teachers, offer a good job with good pay under good conditions in a good atmosphere. Ohio charters already have all the freedom they need to do that. What they'd really like is the freedom to make a charter more like a McDonalds, staffed by easily replaced meat widgets. It isn't great for students, but it's awesome for that bottom line.

The Writer Who Couldn't Answer Standardized Test Questions About Her Own Work (Again)!

We are in standardized test season, and all across the country, students are taking the Big Standardized Test by which they, their schools, and their teachers will be judged. How absurd are these tests? Meet Sara Holbrook, the writer who couldn't answer test questions about her own work.

Back in 2017, Holbrook wrote an essay for Huffington Post entitled, "I Can't Answer These Texas Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems." The writer had discovered that two of her poems were part of the Texas STAAR state assessment tests, and she was a bit startled to discover that she was unable to answer some of the questions.

She certainly looks smart enough

One reason was simple inaccuracy. One question asked why the poet had inserted a stanza break in a particular spot-- and then didn't insert a stanza break in the testing materials. But there was a second issue. Holbrook is a performance poet, and she had inserted the break at the point where, in live readings, she pauses. That choice was not one of the choices available on the test.

In fact, much of Holbrook's issue with the questions was a sort of existential dilemma. Several questions asked, directly or indirectly, for the test taker to judge the author's intentions. The author knew some of her intentions, sort of remembered others, and had others that were layered and complex. But the manufacturers of the test--who had never asked her about any of this--provided only four choices that did not allow her to choose the answer that she knew to be correct.

Now, it's possible that Holbrook is such an angsty, tortured soul of a poet that she simply does not know her own mind as well as the test manufacturers. But Holbrook does not fit the stereotypical faux image of a poet as a fuzzy-headed artiste. She has held writing jobs in the real world, such as Director of Communications for legal giant Jones Day and Public Information Officer for the public housing authority in Cleveland. She knows what it takes to succeed as a business writer, and she says, "the questions on these tests are not it." She works as an educator and consultant, bringing writing and performance skills into the classroom. Rather than conclude that she does not know her own work, we should instead conclude that the test designers write bad questions. Or as Holbrook herself puts it, "Anytime we ask questions about author intent, we have stepped off the pedagogical sidewalk and into muck."

I reached out to Holbrook recently because the same thing happened to her again. This time a poem of hers was included in a test prep package from Mentoring Minds, LP. The poem itself is called "Walking on the Boundaries of Change," from the book Walking on the Boundaries of Change, Boyds Mills Press, 1998. (Mentoring Minds LP is a Texas corporation, and the previous two poems included in the STAAR test are from the same book, so perhaps Holbrook has some Texas fans who are passing around one copy of her work.) The poem is printed here with the author's permission:

Walking on the Boundaries of Change

Day by day

a tightrope,

walking on the boundaries

of change.

One step --

firm, familiar,

the next step --

shaky, strange.

Some friends

will dare danger,

mock or push each step.

Some friends

knock your confidence.

Real friends

form a net.

It's a simple, sharp moment that captures an emotional picture in some simple images. It's hard to imagine dissecting this with test questions without beating some of the life out of it. Yet Mentoring Minds LD has come up with eight questions.

I cannot reproduce any of the eight questions accompanying the poem here, because the materials include a robust copyright notice that includes phrases such as "maximum extent of the law." But once again, the questions turn on the issue of word choice, central message, and which part of the poem does things "best," all of which hinge on the test taker's interpretation of the poet's intent. And all are multiple choice questions with four possible answers, the kind of test structure that, Holbrook says, causes "students to grow up believing the right interpretation of anything is out there on the internet, and to discredit their own thoughts."

Holbrook, as a poet and an educator, has several thoughts about remedies to these sorts of tests. "Parents, demand to see the test prep materials. Teachers, don't waste time on test prep: you can't teach nonsense. Administrators, take the money you are spending on test prep and spend it on classroom libraries instead. There are no quick fixes. Kids need to read and write voluminously." She advocates for transparency. "If a bike helmet fails to protect a child from injury, consumers can sue the manufacturer. These tests are injurious, but shrouded in secrecy and thereby beyond the reach of most teachers and all parents."

To approach any poem with the notion that each word has one and only one correct reading when language at its most rich involves shades and layers or meaning--what my old college writing professor called "the ambiguity that enriches"--is one way to stifle thinking in students. In many states, we are doing it in grades K through 12.

There are so many layers to Holbrook's situation. The test manufacturers could have contacted her and talked to her about her poem (though Common Core architect David Coleman would argue that doing so was both unnecessary and undesirable), but they didn't. So here we sit, in a bizarre universe where the test writer knows the "correct" answer for a question about a poem, but the person who wrote the poem does not. And at least Holbrook has the option of publicly saying, "Hey, wait a minute," which is more than the deceased authors used for testing can do. But she was only able to do so because somebody risked punishment by sharing test materials with her. Particularly ironic is Mentoring Minds' promise to build critical thinking skills in students, even as Holbrook, by taking reading, writing and speaking out to students in living, breathing, dynamic workshops, is doing far more to promote critical thinking than can be accomplished by challenging students to guess which one of four available answers an unseen test writer has deemed "correct."

Originally posted at Forbes.

19 Rules For Life (2019 edition)

I first posted this list when I turned 60, and have revisited it many times. Now that my birthday has reappeared. I thought I'd start the practice of annually revisiting and revising it. I will keep my original observation-- that this list does not represent any particular signs of wisdom on my part, because I discovered these rules much in the same way that a dim cow discovers an electric fence.

1. Don't be a dick.

There is no excuse for being mean on purpose. Life will provide ample occasions on which you will hurt other people, either through ignorance or just because sometimes life puts us on collision courses with others and people get hurt. There is enough hurt and trouble and disappointment and rejection  naturally occurring in the world; there is no reason to deliberately go out of your way to add more.

There's a lesson here, somewhere.

2. Do better.

You are not necessarily going to be great. But you can always be better. You can always do a better job today than you did yesterday. Make better choices. Do better. You can always do better.

3. Tell the truth.

Words matter. Do not use them as tools with which to attack the world or attempt to pry prizes out of your fellow humans (see Rule #1). Say what you understand to be true. Life is too short to put your name to a lie. This does not mean that every word out of your mouth is some sort of Pronouncement from God. Nor does it mean you must be unkind. But you simply can't speak words that you know to be untrue.

4. Seek to understand.

Do not seek comfort or confirmation. Do not simply look for ways to prove what you already believe. Seek to understand, and always be open to the possibility that what you knew to be true yesterday must be rewritten today in the light of new, better understanding. Ignoring evidence you don't like because you want to protect your cherished beliefs is not good.

5. Listen and pay attention.

Shut up, listen, watch, and pay attention. How else will you seek understanding? Watch carefully. Really see. Really hear. People in particular, even the ones who lie, will tell you who they are if you just pay attention. Your life is happening right now, and the idea of Special Moments just tricks us into ignoring a million other moments that are just as important. Also, love is not a thing you do at people-- to say that you care about someone even as you don't actually hear or see them is a lie.

6. Be grateful.

You are the recipient of all sorts of bounty that you didn't earn. Call it the grace of God or good fortune, but be grateful for the gifts you have been given. You did not make yourself. Nobody owes you anything, but you owe God/the Universe/fate everything. I have been hugely fortunate/blessed/privileged; I would have to be some sort of huge dope to grab all that life has given me and say, "This is mine. I made this. It's all because I'm so richly deserving." I've been given gifts, and the only rational response I can think of is to be grateful.

7. Mind the 5%

95% of life is silly foolishness that humans just made up and then pretended had some Great Significance. Only about 5% really matters, has real value. Don't spend energy, worry, fret, concern, time, stress on the other 95%.  The trick is that every person has a different idea of what constitutes the 5%, and sometimes the path to honoring and loving that other person is to indulge their 5%.

8. Take care of the people around you.

"What difference can one person make" is a dumb question. It is impossible for any individual human to avoid making a difference. Every day you make a difference either for good or bad. People cross your path. You either makes their lives a little better or you don't. Choose to make them better. The opportunity to make the world a better place is right in front of your face every day; it just happens to look like other people (including the annoying ones).

9. Commit.

If you're going to do it, do it. Commitment lives on in the days when love and passion are too tired to get off the couch. Also, commitment is like food. You don't eat on Monday and then say, "Well, that takes care of that. I don't need to think about eating for another week or so. " Commitment must be renewed regularly.

10. Shut up and do the work

While I recognize there are successful people who ignore this rule, this is my list, so these are my rules. And my rule is: Stop talking about how hard you're working or what a great job you're doing or what tremendous obstacles you're overcoming. In short, stop delivering variations on, "Hey, look at me do this work! Look at me!" Note, however, there is a difference between "Hey, lookit me do this work" and "Hey, look at this important work that needs to be done." Ask the ego check question-- if you could do the work under the condition that nobody would ever know that you did it, would you still sign up? If the answer isn't "yes," as yourself why not.

11.  Assume good intent.

Do not assume that everyone who disagrees with you is either evil or stupid. They may well be either, or both-- but make them prove it. People mostly see themselves as following a set of rules that makes sense to them. If you can understand their set of rules, you can understand why they do what they do. Doesn't mean you'll like it any better, but you may have a basis for trying to talk to them about it. And as a bare minimum, you will see yourself operating in a world where people are trying to do the right thing, rather than a hostile universe filled with senseless evil idiots. It's a happier, more hopeful way to see the world. But yeah-- there are still evil dopes in the world.

12. Don't waste time on people who are not serious.

Some people are just not serious people. They don't use words seriously. They don't have a serious understanding of other people or their actions or the consequences of those actions. They can be silly or careless or mean, but whatever batch of words they are tossing together, they are not serious about them. They are not guided by principle or empathy or anything substantial. Note: do not mistake grimness for seriousness and do not mistake joy and fun for the absence of seriousness.

13. Don't forget the point.

Whatever it is you're doing, don't lose sight of the point. Don't lose sight of the objective. It's basic Drivers Ed 101. If you look a foot in front of the car, you'll wander all over the road. If you stare right at the tree you want to miss, you will drive right into it. Where you look is where you go. Keep your eye on the goal. Remember your purpose. And don't try to shorthand it; don't imagine that you know the path that guarantees the outcome you want. Focus on the point (even if it's a goal that you may never reach) because otherwise you will miss Really Good Stuff because you  had too many fixed ideas about what the path to your destination is supposed to look like.

14. People are complicated (mostly)

People grow up. People learn things. People have a day on which their peculiar batch of quirks is just what the day needs. Awful people can have good moments, and good people can have awful moments-- it's a mistake to assume that someone is all one thing or another. Nobody can be safely written off and ignored completely. Corollary: nobody can be unquestioningly trusted and uncritically accepted all the time. People are a mixed mess of stuff. Trying to sort folks into good guys and bad guys is a fool's game.

15. Say "yes."

Doors will appear on your path. Open them even if they are not exactly what you were expecting or looking for. Don't simply fight or flee everything that surprises or challenges you (but don't be a dope about it, either). Most of what I've screwed up in life came from reacting in fear-- not sensible evaluation of potential problems, but just visceral fear. Most of what is good about my life has come from saying "yes." And most of that is not at all what I would have expected or planned for.

16. Make something.

Music, art, refurbished furniture, machinery. Something. 

17. Show up.

The first rule of all relationships is that you have to show up. And you have to fully show up. People cannot have a relationship with someone who isn't there, and that includes someone who looks kind of like they're there but who isn't really there. You have to show up.

18. Refine your core.

Know who you are. Strip the definition of yourself of references to situation and circumstance; don't make the definition about your car, your hair, your job, your house. The more compact your definition of self, the less it will be buffeted and beaten by changes in circumstance. Note: this is good work to do long before you, say, retire from a lifelong career.

19. How you treat people is about you, not about them.

It's useful to understand this because it frees you from the need to be a great agent of justice in the world, meting out rewards and punishments based on what you think about what people have done or said. It also gives you power back that you give up when your stance is that you have to wait to see what someone says or does before you react to it. Treat people well because that's how you should treat people, not because you have decided they deserve it. But don't be a dope; if someone shows you that they will always bite you in the hand, it's prudent to stop offering them your hand. 

ICYMI: Birthday Eve Edition (5/19)

Might even eat some cake today just to warm up. You know the drill, folks. Read and share. Read and share. Only you can help amplify voices in the web-o-sphere.

A Letter To Journalists About Dark Money

A great little primer here from Massachusetts, where dark money tried to make charter schools happen.

Curriculum for Profit and Propaganda  

Alan Singer takes a look at the newfound interest in curriculum among the reformnoscenti.

Open and Accessible?

A Chalkbeat reporter tries to attend ten charter school  meetings in a month. It doesn't go well.

Gates Funded Commission To Put Value on College Education

Just in case you were worried that Bill Gates might be done messing with education.

I was a white teacher who couldn't talk about race.    

Sarah Fine with an open and honest look at her own journey. If you only read one piece this week...

About charter schools-- and Betsy DeVos

Larry Campbell will not make you guess what he really feels.

At Excel Academy, a confrontation that never should have happened

An ugly encounter between a racist and students. For your "I can't believe this kind of crap still happens" file.

Better To Be Born Rich 

A Georgetown study tracked kindergartners from 1989. Turns out that test scores don't change your future, but the economics of your family pretty well set it.

What Do Teachers Really Want From Professional Development? Respect.

Yes, somebody gets it.

Dear STAR Test, We Need To Talk, Again  

Another crappy standardized test. This time it's reading.

Jeanne Allen  

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider digs deep for the story of the crankiest reformster of them all.

The New But Not Necessarily Improved ASD

Tennessee's Achievement School District was a model for how the state could take over a bunch of schools and work miracles. Only it couldn't. But the ASD is still thrashing away down there.

Avenue to the Stars  

Have Your Heard looks at the intersection of school and the free market

Jeb Bush's A+ Disaster

A look at how Florida is still paying the price for Jeb! Bush and his edureformerific ideas.

Are School Playgrounds Still Empty?   

Nancy Bailey looks at the issue of littles with no chance to run and play.