A Teacher's Final Lesson

If you live in western Pennsylvania, you may already know the story of Ashley Kuzma. If you don't, I'd like to share it with you.

Kuzma was born in Beaver County, PA, and graduated from Freedom Area High School in 2005. She attended Pitt where she earned a Bachelor's in History and Poli Sci, and Edinboro University, where she earned a Master's in Education and a teaching certificate. She worked as a long term sub teaching social studies, then later became a gifted support teacher for Lancaster schools, then taught gifted at McDowell Intermediate High School.

Teaching was a challenge as she suffered from throat problems that made her increasingly hoarse. A biopsy revealed those problems to be the result of laryngeal cancer. She went through radiation treatments, then a partial laryngectomy. She returned for the final day of school with a feeding tube. Then the cancer came back. In September  of 2018, she went into the Cleveland Clinic for a total laryngectomy, plus 30 radiation and 5 chemotherapy treatments. She returned to the classroom, able to speak softly with the aid of a prosthesis held against a permanent opening in her neck. As a young teacher, she did not have nearly enough sick days accumulated to cover her absences, so much of her treatment occurred during unpaid leave.

Her story became more widely known when a friend entered her in a Norwegian Cruise Lines contest that offered free cruises for 30 teachers who showed a passion for teaching. Kuzma was one of the winners.

Before it was time to leave for the cruise, Kuzma learned that her cancer was back. She traveled to Mexico and Chichen Itza. Her treatment options were limited.

On September 22, Ashley Kuzma died at the age of 32.

Before she passed away, Kuzma completed one other exceptional act. She wrote her own obituary. Here are some excerpts:

When you have recurrent laryngeal cancer that just won't take no for an answer, you have a lot of time to think about death. The good thing is I no longer have to worry about saving for retirement, paying off student loans, or trying not to get skin cancer??? One positive outcome from having recurrent cancer was that it taught me to let go of the insignificant things and to just enjoy the people and places. After three recurrences, my body finally had enough and I passed away on Sunday, September 22, 2019 at the Cleveland Clinic.

I am extremely grateful for the life that I lived. I was fortunate to have a loving family, supportive friends, a stable and meaningful job, and a house to call my own. My wish for you is to stop letting insignificant situations stress you out. Do what is important to you. Relax and enjoy the company of those around you. What do you value in your life? In the end, that's what matters.

This obituary was written by Ashley preceding her passing as part of the many preparations to make the transition easier on her family.

There's not much to add. I am reminded of my old friend Susie who, during her rounds of chemo, would step outside between classes, lean against the building, throw up, and then go back to work. I am reminded of Jim, who kept showing up to teach his classes until the doctors made him stop. There is nothing good to say about people who die young. It's just a reminder that as long as we're alive, we have work to do-- but we won't be alive forever. Don't sweat the insignificant things. Know what matters; let the rest go.

Bad Administrator Field Guide

Is there a lousier job in the world than that of a school administrator. For the past twenty years, it has been all of the responsibility and none of the power. Yet a building principal (and to some extent a superintendent) have enormous control over a teacher's workplace-- how miserable is it, how safe is it, and how hard is it for teachers to do the job they signed up to do?

Administrators come in all shapes and sizes these days (though they are still mostly men), especially since the last twenty years of reformy baloney has done some bad things to the hiring pool. But there are still good ones out there who somehow find a way to fulfill the basic function of an administrator-- that is, to provide the tools, setting and processes that encourage your people to do their best work.

But there are other  admins out there. Bad ones. This taxonomy is by no means complete, but here's a quick introduction to some of the species you might find yourself dealing with:

The Conflict Avoider    

I just want to go through the day without any yelling, either from me or at  me. If you run into my office screaming that the building is on fire, the first problem I will want to solve is that you are in my office screaming. If you are screwing up, I will not call you into my office; I will just send an email scolding everybody. My go-to response in a crisis is to suggest we all  just shut up about it and wait for it to go away quietly on its own. If I must pass on bad news, I will do it in an email on Friday afternoon at 6:00 PM.

The Cruise Director  

I'm hoping that my principalling duties don't become so demanding that I don't have time to put a fun puzzle or quiz in your mailbox every morning. I think a good way to maintain morale is to have fun contests, with prizes to be awarded from the bag of Oriental Trading goodies I have in my office closet. If you insist that you would rather be treated like a grown-ass professional adult, I will alternately freeze you out of important work stuff and tease you in annoying ways that you can't push back on without being insubordinate. It's your own fault for not being a team player. I don't  know why you're such a grump-- I'm pretty sure the kids think I'm cool.

The Boss, And Don't You Forget It  

I don't have any particular educational philosophy or guiding management principles other than my desire to assert dominance over everyone I meet, whether it's a thirty-year classroom veteran or a five year old kindergartner. I will escalate the smallest disagreement just to show you that I'm in charge here.Your only hope of getting me to change direction is to set it up so that I think it's my idea and I'm straightening you out.

The Random Synapse

Most of the time I'm happy to just stay in my office and let you teachers do your thing. But every once in a while I read an article or attend a workshop, and I get all inspired. Remember when I read that book about learning styles and made everyone rewrite their curriculum and start using new lesson plan forms? Lucky for you I also have a short attention span.

The Ladder Climber  

Yeah, your school is lovely. The problem is "Didn't mess with success and just kept things running smoothly" doesn't look as good on my resume as "dynamic agent of transformative change," so I'm going to be implementing several huge programs to change how things work. I may or may not get my next job offer before we get these new ideas off the ground (I'm already interviewing), but that's okay because I've put no thought into sustainability because I don't expect to be here long enough for that to matter. Hell, on my way out I'm going to take all my materials with me anyway (for the portfolio), so you're not going to have the materials or information you need to keep it going anyway.

The Commuter  

I don't live here, and I don't visit. Half the kids in this school couldn't pick me out of a line-up if I were standing there with an inflatable doll and an oversized teddy bear. I have no idea about the culture and values of this community, and nobody who lives here has ever seen me outside of the building.

The Phantom

I probably said something about my office being open, but here's the thing-- I'm never in it. I go to conferences and travel to other districts and deliver speeches about my awesome managerial-- well, I don't have to explain how I spend my time to you. Do you have a problem? That's why I have an assistant.

The Data Overlord  

The past decade has been freakin' awesome! No more talking about all that human interaction stuff-- all I need are spreadsheets with test scores plugged in. You say that there important aspects of education that can't be measured by standardized test scores, but I say if it isn't something that can be handled by Excel, it just doesn't matter. I have three big beautiful computer monitors in my room, and that's all I need. If I have to direct teachers to improve their data, I can just email them. If I play my cards right, I won't have to interact with carbon based life forms for weeks at a time. What do you mean, "Do I even know the students"? I've studied all their data at great length. What else do I need to know?

The Train Engineer  

We will by God have order around here. I don't care if the students are learning or the staff is miserable-- I just want order. Know what you're supposed to be doing, and if you can't remember,  just consult the systems laid out in the policies and procedures manual. It takes all my time just to keep things orderly around here. God, but it would be so much easier if we didn't have all of these students.

The Royal We

The way I see it, loyalty is important, so I'm loyal to those teachers who are loyal to me. I mean, I don't have time to take care of everyone's problems, so why not focus on solving issues for people I like, and  who show their gratitude. Why not stack committees with good team players (my team, that is). And why not hand out privileges and perks (including the selective non-enforcement of rules) to people that I like? And why would I want to listen to people I don't like? Get on my team, or shut up.

The Amateur

I never had an actual classroom teaching career, so I really don't have the faintest idea what the hell you teachers do all day. I will compensate by insisting that you implement policies that I pull out of my butt. And if you ever need some helpful support or coaching, you can be sure that I won't provide it, because, again, and I can't stress this enough, I have no idea what the hell you do.

I've Made A Huge Mistake    

"Get out of the classroom," they said. "Take a cushy admin job and get a huge pay bump," they said. Now I can't quit because my family needs the health insurance, so I spend my days hiding and running away.

The Dunning Kruger Test Case

I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, but I'm blissfully unaware of the gaping chasm of professional ignorance taking up negative space in my brain. Some days I get cranky because of the feeling that a bunch of people are in on something that I'm oblivious to, but mostly I'm content to offer directives and advice that fall somewhere between "useless" and "dangerously wrong."

The Bad Policy Fatalist  

You don't have to tell me. I know as well as you do that the Big Standardized Test does not give us useful data, that our VAM-based evaluations are bunk, and that our budget cuts are happening not because of mismanagement or eroding tax base but because of charter schools. I know that many of these things that have been passed to us by the state are toxic educational malpractice. My response will continue to be a shrug. This is what the state says to do, so, well, we'll just do that. I know it sucks to have class time wasted on test prep and practice exams, and that much of this policy is an assault on teachers and students. Boy, wouldn't be great if someone had your back and stood up for you in the face of all this. I wonder where we can find someone like that.

The Bus Driver     

Every school has its occasional crisis. Problems of one sort or another will always arise. When they do, you can be sure that I will be the first to step up and throw you under the bus. I don't know what's gone wrong this time, but it sure as hell isn't my fault.

The Helpless Bystander  

After  you've worked for me for a while, you will wonder why they pay me. There is no problem so small, no issue so trivial, that I can't shrug and walk away. "I wish I could help, but that's the  policy," I'll say, and you'll point out that I "wrote the frickin' policy in the first place," but I'll just nod sadly and walk away. See, doing things is hard, and it's already been a long day. Hope you can find a person to help you solve your issue.

The Chameleon   

I  know what I told you yesterday about the issue, but since I talked to you, I've talked to someone else, and that person wanted hear different things than you did, and I'm firmly committed to whatever I said in my most recent conversation with someone.

The Passive Aggressive Delegator

Look, I don't have time to do everything myself. And I went to some training where they said empowering teachers was a good thing and helped a school run better. So I'm putting you on this committee and empowering you to study up on this issue and come up with a solution, and I will keep sending that solution back to you for reconsideration until you finally come up with the answer that I've already decided I want. And if that isn't fun enough, next year I'm sending you all to PLC training, most of which I'll ignore as I implement plain old principal-directed work groups. But I'll call them PLCs because that's cool.

You may find many of these types combined into one big bad admin turducken. And there are, of course, many more, and I'm sure we can read about them in the comments (and yes, many of these bad managers are not exclusive to education). I've skipped over the big city politician-admins  and the guy I once worked for who expressed everything in ill-fitting sports metaphors. But you have to draw the line somewhere.

What Is The Real Promise Of School Choice

AEI hosted a pep rally for the DeVos $5 million scholarship tax credit, and afterwards, Rick Hess put up the latest entry in AEI's 60 second that "reminds" us of the "real promise" of charters and choice:

Thank you to @BetsyDeVosED, @KellyannePolls, and state decision makers for a great conversation about Education Freedom Scholarships today! In any discussion about school choice, it's important to remember its *real* promise. @rickhess99 explains #In60Seconds pic.twitter.com/Q0ADrHom9S

— AEI Education (@AEIeducation) October 1, 2019

Yes, apparently the real promise of choice is that it will empower educators to start up schools where they can do their thing. This has to be the six gazillionth tweaking of the charter argument, and one of the least convincing to date. [Note: Hess wrote after I posted that he has been making this point  for a very long time. That would make him, by my count, the only one, but it would still mean that this is not  a new tweak after all.]

After all, the argument for the longest time was that choice was necessary to rescue students from failing public schools and the failing teachers who failed there. Hess says that the real promise of choice is not higher math and reading scores, but  of course that was exactly the promise of school choice; if it was not a real promise it was certainly a marketing promise. These score-raising  charters would be staffed by Teach For America folks, or other alternative path folks, because public school teachers were not desirable. One selling point for many charters has been that they are teacher-proof-- the charter system's program is set in cement, sometimes scripted, sometimes enshrined in computer software so that the teacher is just a coach.

Feeling empowered yet?

There have been other real promises of charter schools articulated. Mike Petrilli was willing to say out loud the promise that charters would allow strivers to get away from Those Other Students. And as study after study showed that choice didn't raise scores, some advocates switched over to the idea  of a moral imperative for choice; iow, it doesn't matter what the educational effects of choice might be, because parents should be free to choose. Lately, that argument has been given a religious spin. And while not many put it down anywhere outside of tweets and conversation, do not underestimate the number of people who simply want to see "government" schools crushed (and those uppity teacher unions with them).

It is hard to think of a choice or charter program that has made any attempt to empower teachers. "Empower teachers" in a charter setting usually means "free them from evil union rules that interfere with their freedom to donate an extra sixty hours of work of free" or "liberate them to be paid poorly." Instructionally, charter and choice schools often are less likely to give teachers power and more likely to put them in a straightjacket. Teachers who have any objections to working conditions are scolded for putting  adult concerns ahead of the children's interests; unsurprising from a movement that has been dominated by education amateurs who belittle the expertise of actual teachers.

While I am sure that there are good individual examples here in there, if the empowerment  of teachers has been a major purpose and theme of charters and choice, I missed it somehow.

This new rationale is not completely out of left field for Hess, who wrote The Cage-Busting Teacher about how individual teachers could break loose and become forces for educational good wherever they are. But it's important to note that in the video, Hess is talking about "educators" and not "teachers,"and by current standards, anyone who wants to get involved in the education business can call himself an educator. Heck, put in two years with TFA and you are suddenly an education policy  expert.

In fact, one piece of the video is not new at all. Hess notes that these reformy educators hit a "wall" created by government officials, central offices, school boards, and the community. It's an odd but familiar complaint-- "I want to launch my new edubusiness idea but all these stakeholders are acting like they have some kind of stake in this, like they've been elected or hired to watch over public education. They are harshing my entrepreneurial buzz." But with a Secretary of Education devoted to dismantling public education, and who considers business interests the most important interests of all,       it's a timely complaint.

Actually, on reflection, it's possible I'm not being fair here, and that Hess is actually talking about what has truly been the first and foremost real promise of school choice all along-- the promise that businessmen, hedge fund investors, and any other entrepreneurial education amateurs will finally be given a way to tap into that giant mountain of taxpayer education money, a way that will circumvent elected officials, government regulation, and the judgment of actual education professionals.

Are School Vouchers A Path To Religious Freedom?

Let me make a confession-- I am not at all unsympathetic to many Libertarian beliefs. I am wary of government involvement in many arenas, and the bigger the government, the warier I am. Additionally, I know some Libertarians personally, and they are perfectly nice human beings. But when you start turning general Libby philosophical notions into specific policies, particularly in areas where my exercise of my liberty crashes into your exercise of your liberty-- well, that never seems to work out well-- or even consistent.  At a minimum, I find some of these conclusions puzzling.

Let's take the new Libby talking point on school vouchers, as articulated in many venues by CATO Institute's Education Guy Neal McCluskey. 

The argument that to have "equality under the law," religious folks need to be able to fully exercise their beliefs, including sending their children to a private religious school, and so taxpayers should fund vouchers for just that purpose. 

This is a close cousin of the argument that this administration has put forth in a variety of forms, which boils down to this: if your personal faith says you should discriminate against certain classes of people, but federal law says you can't, then federal law should step aside for your personal beliefs. This point of view has scored a victory or two, and it's important because it marks the first time that the battle between the free exercise clause (you should get to exercise whatever religious beliefs you hold) and the establishment clause (the government should not choose a side in the world of unending religious debates) is being decided in favor of the exercise clause.

You have, of course, always been free to send your chid to a religious school. What's new here is the argument that the government should pay for it. 

I'm confused at finding this argument coming from conservative Libby folks. These are the same folks who like to characterize taxation as theft, but in their support of vouchers, Libbys are saying that citizens should be taxed so that their neighbors can practice their religion. Imagine telling a community of right-wing Trumpian Christians that their property taxes will be used to send children to an Islamic school, or Southern Baptists discovering that their tax dollars will be supporting the local Catholic school. This does not require a great deal of imagination, as part of how we got here is the outrage of religious taxpayers being riled up (sometimes honestly and sometimes at the prodding of those who would like to weaken public schools) that their tax dollars are going to a public system that allows the study of Other Religions (aka the not-Christian ones) or Transcendental Meditation or evolution. Good heavens-- just watch this administration go after colleges just for saying too many nice things about Islam.

Their argument is that they don't want their tax dollars to support a school that doesn't teach the things they agree with-- but a voucher system will not change that one iota. The public system is ideally religiously neutral, and yes, I know it is not always successful in that regard, but at least the ideal is there. A voucher system with no religious restrictions allows, even requires, your Christian tax dollars to be sent to a school that  explicitly teaches that your faith is wrong. 

Beyond that, a voucher system also gets government in the business of religious oversight. It's possible, I suppose, to have a voucher system with no oversight at all in which parents are handed a government check that can be spent on private school tuition, textbooks, an X-box, or a used car. We could have a system where the government just gives the money away, no questions asked. But again, that seems to have been one of the objections reformy folks have to public schools in the first place, and I think, "Just give us your money and don't ask where it's going" is unlikely to fly with folks interested in accountability.

So at a bare minimum we get a system in which a government agency asks, "Are you going to spend  this on something legit? Is this place a real school?" When then Catholics, the Free Methodists, the Muslims, the Satanists, and the Pastafarians are fighting over limited resources and are each struggling to prove that they're a real school that is entitled to voucher funds, how exactly is the Government Bureau of Legitimate Religious Schools going to make that call? And why would anybody want them to??

It is a measure of how narrow-focused and how assured of their own supremacy that Christianists are that they tend to imagine that breaking down the wall between church and state would only unleash Christians in the public square, and not also every other religion and anti-religion to fight for space in that same square. Nor are enough people of faith conscious of the fact that the wall between church and state protects the church just as much as it does the state.

I always expect Libertarians to struggle with religion-related issues; after all, Libertarian Patron Saint Ayn Rand thought religion is for dopes. But I am sincerely puzzled that Libbys would advocate for any of this. I expect a certain amount of "Anybody should be able to educate their kids any way they want," (even though I'd argue that as a country we have a stake in making sure that everybody gets an education based on the strongest current body of knowledge we have available). But when you add on "and taxpayers should foot the bill," I'm just sincerely puzzled to find Libertarians and other righties cheering. They didn't  want to pay for anyone's health care; why would they want to pay for their education?

There are plenty of other reasons to oppose vouchers without religious restrictions, including the tendency of such schools to discriminate in ways that are, and should be, illegal. That's before we even get to questions about accountability,  both financial and academic, as well as the sheer financial inefficiency of trying to pay for multiple school systems with the money that wasn't enough to fund a single system. 

Maybe Libbys like this idea for no reason other than it punches another hole in public education. I generally think of Libertarians as more intellectually honest than that, but I have a hard time seeing why they would be interested in pushing federally-subsidized religion. Yes, parents chose, sort of (is there any better  marketing hook than "Give us your voucher dollars or your child might go to hell"), but taxpayers, those poor abused victims of the government pay. It's a bad idea for so many reasons, reasons that cover such a broad range that some of them should be visible no matter where you sit-- even if you sit way over on the right.

ICYMI: Show Weekend Edition (9/29)

Last weekend was a family wedding in State College, so I did not get this weekly digest done. This weekend I open the local production of The Music Man that I'm directing, so things are a little busy at this house. But I'm still collecting a few good reads for you to read (if you haven't already). Remember to share.

Litigating Algorithms Beyond Education  

Audrey Amrein-Beardsley went to a conference to talk about VAM and heard about the widespread use of similarly bad algorithms all across society. It's not just education, and it's not pretty.

How To Keep Teachers From Leaving The Profession  

From the Atlantic. The secret is in the URL title-- teachers need other teachers to succeed.

How The Bush Foundation Wasted $45 Million Attacking Teachers 

The story of how one more bunch of rich amateurs set out to remake education and failed.

Immigrant kids and a town's backlash    

When the bus driver is against immigration. This is a well-reported piece from the Washington Post  that captures many of the tensions created by large immigration  in small towns.

Another School Leadership Disaster  

Jeff Bryant has been taking a look at the lucrative pipeline that puts less-than-awesome candidates in administrative positions.

Blinded By Science  

Nancy Flanagan looks at how throwing around the "s" word doesn't always work out well for educators.

That Stanford Study That Links Achievement To Money  

There were several takes on that study this week (including mine), but I don't think anybody did a better job with it than Jan Resseger.

Media Coverage of Science of Reading 

Would you like a handy reading list for prying apart the latest round of reading warfare? The ever-erudite Paul Thomas has you covered.

Stand For Children Messing with LA Elections 

Why and how is the Oregon-based reformster group messing with Louisiana's education business? The indispensable Mercedes Schneider has tracked it all down.

Digital Ed Has a Cheerleading Problem  

Rick Hess clues us in on what we already know-- digital ed tools are often a snare and a delusion and a sad web of false promises.

The Myth of the Behind The Times School Is Wrong  

Yeah, we already knew this, too. But it's nice to see somebody say so.

Do Districts Actually Want Black Male Teachers?

At EdWeek. Actions speak louder than words.

More Money, Less Oversight for Ohio's Charters  

Short but sweet-- well, not sweet, exactly-- blog post from 10th period. Ohio is a mess.    

Betsy DeVos, The Musical  

Yes, that's a real show, sort of. Have You Heard had the creator of this nifty musical on the podcast (Jennifer Berkshire actually saw a performance) and this is your must-listen item of the week.

A Good Teacher Is Not Like A Candle

I just hate this kind of thing.

First of all, is there any other profession that has to put up with this. Substitute "lawyer" or "plumber" or even "doctor" for "teacher" in this meme, and it just sounds dumb. "Nurse," maybe. (Hmm. What do nursing and teaching have in common as professions. Could it be that they're not commonly associated with testosterone?) We don't expect any other professionals to consume themselves in order to do their jobs.

Second of all, notice the use of "it." For the simile to really track, "it" should be "she," but as soon as we put it that way, the ickiness of the analogy becomes more obvious. Really? Do parents say, "I expect my child's teacher to consume herself in order to educate my child?"

If we walk into our child's classroom in March and find a teacher who is exhausted, worn down, barely functioning, do we think, "Excellent. This is going just as it should." Do we expect a teacher to somehow become a new, fresh candle every fall and be a burned-out stub every May, or do we expect this self-immolation to occur over the length of the teacher's career? If so, is the expectation that the burned-out husk of a self-consumed teacher should just die promptly after retirement, having been fully self-consumed?

This is a close relative of the hero teacher myth, and it shares the notion that someone becomes a teacher out of some outsized level of nobility and self-sacrifice. And there are all sorts of problems with this baloney.

One is that, of course, someone who is teaching out of noble impulses of heroic self-sacrifice couldn't possibly be worried about making a living wage or having decent benefits. It's people who buy this sort of baloney who get all pearl-clutchy over teachers who want a decent contract, as if the desire to be able to support a family is sullying their noble calling, distracting from their "personal mission." This model becomes an excuse to take and take and take from teachers-- their money, their time, because, hey, you want to give your all to the kids, right?

More importantly, this is the kind of crap that saddles young teachers with a huge pile of guilt. Six years ago I wrote a piece that is still the most-read piece I've ever written. Here's part of what I said:

The hard part of teaching is coming to grips with this:

There is never enough.

There is never enough time. There are never enough resources. There is never enough you.

As a teacher, you can see what a perfect job in your classroom would look like. You know all the assignments you should be giving. You know all the feedback you should be providing your students. You know all the individual crafting that should provide for each individual's instruction. You know all the material you should be covering. You know all the ways in which, when the teachable moment emerges (unannounced as always), you can greet it with a smile and drop everything to make it grow and blossom.

You know all this, but you can also do the math. 110 papers about the view of death in American Romantic writing times 15 minutes to respond with thoughtful written comments equals-- wait! what?! That CAN'T be right! Plus quizzes to assess where we are in the grammar unit in order to design a new remedial unit before we craft the final test on that unit (five minutes each to grade). And that was before Ethel made that comment about Poe that offered us a perfect chance to talk about the gothic influences. And I know that if my students are really going to get good at writing, they should be composing something at least once a week. And if I am going to prepare my students for life in the real world, I need to have one of my own to be credible.

If you are going to take any control of your professional life, you have to make some hard, conscious decisions. What is it that I know I should be doing that I am not going to do?

The blazing candle of self-immolation encourages young teachers to think, "I'm so bad at this. Last night I could have stayed up till three grading papers, but I fell asleep on the couch instead. And I never should have told my husband that I'd go on a day trip with him and the kids this weekend-- that's time I could be getting planning done. Maybe if I go in Monday at 4 AM and get a head start, I can fix this..."

Teachers either grow out of this mode of thinking, or they leave teaching.

This is no way to model being a responsible adult for the children in your classroom (many of whom may know no other adults that aren't family). This is no way to do your job well. This is no way to live your life. Yes, teaching a job that requires you to employ everything you have, everything you know, every tool in your ever-expanding tool box. But it most definitely does not require you to consume yourself-- in fact, it requires you to NOT consume yourself. You exercise and work out and give your sweat and blood to get stronger, not to destroy your physical self. You study and read and discuss and ponder to become smarter and, God willing, wiser, not to break down your mental faculties.

For heaven's sake, don't be a candle. Be, I don't know, a tree. Grow stronger and taller and as you do, provide the shade that helps a garden grow by you. Or be a river that swells and flows and feeds into other waterways. Or be a bird that collects twigs and branches to build a strong, nurturing nest. Or be a sack of cement that becomes a part of a strong foundation, or become a tube of toothpaste, or a diesel engine, or a waffle.

Or you could, you know, be a human. Just a regular human being using the skills and knowledge that you have acquired (and continue to acquire) to help young humans better understand the universe around them and their own best selves and how to be fully human in the world. Do that. Do that while accepting and embracing the limits of your own humanity even as you stretch against them so that you, too, can also grow into your best self while being more fully human in the world-- the whole world and not just the world inside the walls of your classroom.

Do that. Because you are person and not a frickin' candle.

Stanford: Opportunity And Testing Baloney

Look, it's not that I want everyone to stop any discussion of Big Standardized Test scores at all forever (okay, I might, but I recognize that I'm a radical in this issue and I also recognize that reasonable people may disagree with me). But what I really want everyone to stop pretending that the BS Test scores are an acceptable proxy for other factors.

But here comes a new "data tool" from Stanford, and watch how EdWeek opens its piece about the new tool:

An interactive data tool from the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University creates the first database that attempts to measure the performance of every elementary and middle school in the country.

The data set not only provides academic achievement for schools, districts, and states around the country, but it also allows those entities to be compared to one another, even though they don't all use the same state tests.

No.

No no no no no NO no no no hell no. The tool does not measure the performance of every school in the country, and it does not provide academic achievement either. It allows folks to compare the math and reading scores on the BS Tests across state lines. That's it. That's all. It's a clever method of comparing apples to oranges, but that's all. Academic achievement? It covers two academic areas, and not very well at that.

(And while I'm ranting, let me also point out that schools do not perform. Students, teachers, staff, other human beings-- they perform. Schools sit there. If we start talking about performing schools, before you know it we start spouting dumb things like "low-achieving schools have a large number of low-scoring students" as if that's an analysis and not a definition.)

But maybe this is a press and reporting problem. What does the tool claim to actually do?

We’re measuring educational opportunity in every community in America.

The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University has built the first national database of academic performance.

That's not promising.

The tool actually provides three "measures of educational opportunity" and those are 1) average test scores, 2) learning rates, and 3) trends in test scores. And the explanations are-- are we sure this thing came from Stanford?

You may, for instance, wonder what the heck average test scores have to do with educational opportunity. Here is the short explanation on the front page of the website:

The educational opportunities available in a community, both in and out of school, are reflected in students’ average test scores. They are influenced by opportunities to learn at home, in neighborhoods, in child-care, preschool, and after-school programs, from peers and friends, and at school.

"Are reflected" is weasel language, meaning "probably has some sort of connection to." It might be useful if the project looked at what provides, for instance, opportunities to learn at home. But we're just going to go with "every single thing in the  child's environment has some effect on her test scores, probably."

Learning rates are, of course, growth scores, which the report says "are a better indicator of school quality than average test scores." The notion that student growth is at least as important as raw scores is not new, but I'm going to once again get on my high horse about this indicating school quality. That is only true if you think the mission of a school is to get students to do well on a poorly designed standardized test of reading and math. Is that the sum total of school quality? Nothing else you an to consider, like other non-math and non-reading programs, or safe environment, or caring teachers, or even good facilities?

And trends in test scores?

Tracking average test scores over time shows growth or decline in educational opportunity. These trends reflect shifts in school quality as well changes in family and community characteristics.

And this goes back to my point above-- if you change the population of a school, you change the "school performance" because "school performance" is really "student test scores."

These explanations of how these three methods of massaging test score data tells us anything about educational opportunity or academic achievement or school effectiveness-- they may seem perfunctory and thin, but that's all we get. We are just meant to accept the notion that a score on  a standardized math and reading score gives us both a full picture of how well a school is doing and as a measure of the educational opportunities available to students. Just how magical are these Big Standardized Tests supposed to be?

All of that said, there is a ton of data here available in interactive map graphic form. That data is just about standardized test scores, but there are still some interesting things to see. For instance, Florida absolutely sucks in student growth of scores, which is ironic considering Florida's huge BS Test fetish. Arkansas is also pretty lousy, as are Kansas, North Carolina, Alabama, and Wisconsin. They also thought to run average test scores against SES for districts and lo and behold, there's the same result that we've confirmed over and over-- the direct correlation between poverty and test scores.

Is some of that test data stuff worth discussing? Maybe, but not if we're going to insist that those scores are somehow proxies for much larger, broader concepts like school effectiveness or for nebulous concepts like educational opportunity. If we are going to have useful, meaningful discussions about education we have got to--  GOT TO-- stop pretending that we have data that tells us things that it absolutely does not tell us.