Kristen Bell, Celebrity Charity, Flaming Possums

Sigh.

I was already thinking about this, about how Dana Goldstein's Common Core retrospective for the New York Times collapsed a lot of history, but still had room for that time that pre-disgraced Louis CK made a crack about Common Core math. A great reminder of how a gazillion teachers and parents can comment on the quality of the Core, but a celebrity makes a comment and suddenly people listen.

Well, here comes another one of those feel good stories that doesn't make me feel so good. Kristen Bell, actress, star, celebrity, has started doing a little crowd-sourcing charity for classroom teachers. She's been at this for a while--every Friday on Instagram she posts the story of some heart-warming teacher somewhere and the good work that teacher has been doing and the wish list that teacher has for her classroom. Bell's followers then flood that teacher with supplies forn the classroom.

Yes, it's nice that a celebrity is raising the profile of classroom teachers across the country. Yes, it's nice that the appreciation takes the tangible form of supplies a teacher can use. But it brings us back to the old flaming dead possum problem, which I'll illustrate with this conversation:

Employee: Boss! Boss! Come here. I want to talk to you. I have a huge problem. Somebody put a big flaming dead possum on my desk.

Boss: [Looking into employee's office] I don't see any flaming dead possum.

Employee: Well, I put out the fire, then I took the possum out back and buried it.

Boss: Well, then. It's look to me that there is no problem.

Employee: But-- but-- I shouldn't have to do all that!

Boss: [Walking away, wiping kerosene and possum hair off his hands] Keep up the good work. Glad you have no problems.

The flaming possum problem is always a tough choice-- you don't want the office to burn down, and the fdp really interferes with work, but if you solve the problem yourself, your boss dosn't hve a problem he needs to solve, and before you know it, you are dealing with flaming dead possums on a daily basis. Flaming dead possums happen in all sectors, public and private, but education is particularly prone to it because teachers don't want the possum to burn down a classroom filled with children, nor does anyone want to turn down the generosity of concerned parents and citizens who just want to help. Still, this year's "we received this equipment through the generosity of the PTA" is next year's "we don't have to budget for that-- the PTA will take care of it" which may sound find, but plugging holes in a school budget with scented candle sales is not a sustainable approach.

Plus, not every PTA is equally able to pick up the slack. Using charity to fund education exacerbates problems of inequity. 

You can't deny something like Bell's program. If a hundred Amazon boxes had showed up at my classroom with supplies I needed, I wouldn't have jumped on my high horse and declared, "No, until schools are properly funded, I will not accept these." Damned right I'd have accepted them (though I probably would have shared the wealth with colleagues).

But wouldn't it be cool if someone like Bell, in addition to the teacher's classroom address, also provided the addresses of that teacher's school board and legislators and each Instagram follower who sent a donation also sent a letter or email to the folks in charge saying, "Why do I, a complete stranger, have to help out this teacher? Why can't you properly fund the classrooms in this building?!" What if Bell herself started exerting pressure on the funders of classrooms instead of just helping put our possum fires.

Mind you, I'm not arguing to let the flaming dead possums burn. But at the same time, working on finding and stopping the guys who are killing and igniting the possums needs to happen, too. It may not feel as good, but if celebrities are looking for an education project, that's one I'd suggest.

Next Saturday: Dem Education Forum in Pittsburgh (Yes, I'll Be There)

Next Saturday, December 14, some assortment of Democratic Presidential hopefuls will offer their two cents about education. The crowd will be an invitation-only group of about a thousand public education stakeholders, including yours truly. The Network for Public Education kindly gave me the chance to attend this event, and I am looking forward to it.

If you are not among the thousand invitees, you can still catch the evens as they unfold on several  streaming options. NBC News Now, MSNBC.com and NBC News Learn are all supposed to be carrying it, with MSNBC doing some coverage of it throughout their programming.

You can also head to this page for a look. If nothing else, I'm sure many of us will be tweeting along madly throughout the day (find me at @palan57).

Right now most of the big names are expected (though not, as of the moment, Booker or Bloomberg). Vice President Joe Biden, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Tom Steyer and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Harris had expected to attend but then, well...).

Do I think amazing, momentous things are going to happen? I do not--any candidate who cant get his message locked and loaded for this particular crowd has to be exceptionally dense. The format doesn't allow for many surprises-- candidates talk, moderators ask stuff, crowd (or at least carefully selected members thereof) get to ask questions, rinse and repeat.

But I'm excited the thin is even happening. Remember 2016? You may recall that Campbell Brown set up The74 in hopes of using it to be a player, even a kingmaker, around the hot topic of education. Jeb Bush was poised to use his Florida education record as launch fuel. The74 intended to host two big education fora--one for each party. But the NH forum for the GOP pulled only six candidates out of the clown car field of something-teen (Bush, Kasich, Fiorina, Christie, Jindal, and Walker, and you'd already forgotten a couple of those people had even run, hadn't you). The GOP forum was just a big sloppy wet kiss for school choice and it didn't really matter because by that point it was clear that not one of those six was ever going to be setting national policy for anything. The Democrats snubbed Brown entirely, which didn't matter because none of them could muster anything more robust than "Pre-k is good, we should do it" and "College shouldn't be so expensive." They might eventually dip their toes in the K-12 charter pool, but it was all pretty weak sauce.

Pre-2016, name a single national election in which education was a big enough deal to merit the candidates sitting down to jaw about it.

So even if no news breaks, it's news that major candidates are going to perform some greatest education hits in front of an education audience.

Personally, I've never been to a big time political circus like this (I was at a coffee house meet-and-greet with Pat Toomey once) so I am looking forward to seeing the candidates live and in person, not to mention the chance to say hi to some of my favorite education folks. If I get to ask a question, that would be icing on the cake.

Later this week I'll make my predictions about the forum, once the candidate list is a little more firmed up. Block out your day next Saturday (because eleven days before Christmas, you're probably not super-busy or anything). I think it's going to be a great time.

ICYMI: New Car Edition (12/8)

So yesterday we replaced my wife's car, which has lost an argument with an errant deer. Used car shopping is a pain, but if you want to talk about something that has truly and completely been disrupted by technology. Little browsing, because everyone does that on line. Little haggling compared to the old says because everyone can go online and see what the car is worth. Few tremendous bargains, but few total rip-offs. But still enough paperwork to fell a tree. At any rate, we're mobile again. Now here are your readings from the week.

A Harlem School That Former Students Say Was Run Like A Cult 

Rebecca Klein at HuffPost with a scary tale of one private school that promises, among other things, to save its students "from te homosexual demons in the public school system."

Life For US Students Under Constant Surveillance  

The Guardian takes a look at how bad surveillance has gotten for US students. Spoiler alert: really bad.

How the Denver School Board Flipped  

Denver's super-reformy district was a point of pride for reformsters, but public school advocates just took it back with the last school board elections. The Have You Heard podcast has the story of how it was done.

Uber's Self-driving Car Didn't Know Pedestrians Could Jaywalk  

Speaking of Betsy DeVos's metaphor for school choice, and speaking of using AI for all sorts of edubusines... Wired reports on a cyber-car fatality and its cause-- bad programming.

PISA: Illusion of Excellence, Marketing Baloney  

Okay, I paraphrased the title a bit, but this Washington Post column from Yong Zhao, an education expert with a keen knowledge of China, is the week's best antidote to all the chicken littling over PISA scores.

The Teacher Walkouts

A California Sunday Magazine piece that interviews ten teachers with different perspectives on striking. Interesting piece, with photos by student photographers.

How GreatSchools Nudges Families Toward Schools With Fewer Black and Hispanic Students   

Matt Barnum ruffled many feathers with this Chalkbeat piece that takes a look at how those school ratings really work. Not well, as it turns out.

PA's Weakest Districts Targeted

The York Dispatch editorial board offers an absolutely blistering take on charter schools.

How Corporate Tax Credits Rob Public School Budgets

The headline of this CityLab article pretty well lays it out. A look at some fresh data shows just how bad the hit is.

Support for Charters in 2020 Elections Comes with a Price  

Andre Perry, at the Hechinger Report, is just the king of nuanced and balanced looks at charter policy that clarifies some of the root issues. Here he talks about the week's flap over Black leaders anjd charter support.

Teacher Turnover and Retention   

Brookings did a big fat meta-analyis of the research on teacher retention and attrition. Interesting discussion starter ensues.

America's Epidemic of Unkindness  

From the Atlantic, the best thing not ab out education that I read this week, and a hopeful, thoughtful piece. God damn it babies, you've got to be kind.

End of Semester Bingo  

From McSweeney's, the end of the semester bingo card you've been waiting for. An oldie but a goodie.

MI: Governor Whitmer Files Private School-Whomping Brief

Back in 2016, the Michigan legislature, always on the lookout for a way to send public tax dollars into private pockets, passed Section 388.1752b, a little amendment to the School Aid act that required the state to reimburse private schools for any money they spent "complying with health, safety, or welfare requirement mandated by a law or administrative rule of this state."

In other words, the state would pay them to follow the law.

This lady. I like this lady.

It's intriguing to imagine how a law like this would play out in the rest of the private sector. "We have a bunch of work to do to get up to code, but don't worry-- the state will pay for all of it." It's easy to imagine how this could be abused as well. Church needs some more access ramps and that will mean redoing the whole façade of the building; just call the state and have them write a check.

But Michigan has an constitutional ban on giving public money to private and/or religious schools. So roughly five minutes after 388.1752b was passed, it was being taken to court. Now that it's made it to the Michigan Supreme Court, it's been generating a steady string of motions and amicus briefs from interested parties, like the Michigan Catholic Conference.

Today the stack of briefs got a bit taller with an addition from Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Superintendent of Public Instruction Dr. Michael Rice.

Having taken a look at the case, the governor and superintendent have concluded "that the state can provide funds to nonpublic schools to help them pay the costs of complying with state mandates, but only if those mandates are related to student transportation. Beyond that, the statute’s funding of nonpublic schools is constitutionally prohibited."

In other words, the private schools, says the governor, may go pound sand, and do it on their own dime. But they can have busses.

Hard to say how this will turn out, but I have to say that it's certainlyj a breath of fresh air to see a governor, particularly in the state of Michigan (Motto: Betsy DeVos is our least popular export).

White Flight, Without The Actual Flight

We can talk about lots of complicated economic and sociological forces that have fed the problems of school segregation in this country, but the root causes are pretty simple–historically, we have a whole lot of white folks who don’t want their children to go to school with the children of black folks, and they have been creative about finding ways to avoid it.

When Brown v. Board of education forced desegregation, communities all across the South responded with segregation academies, private schools where only certain children were welcome. While we’ve long known about these schools, a new website called Academy Stories has launched, featuring first persons stories from people who attended those schools. The site has only a handful of stories at the moment, but each one is worth the read, a story of what the years of desegregation looked like to students. In some cases, the move to a private academy was masked by language about quality and being “pioneers.” Some were more direct. Writes one:

Others might cloak their racism in talk about providing “quality education” or “upholding our traditions,” but my father voiced his prejudices for all to hear.

There was also, of course, white flight. White families exited areas in search of neighborhoods that came with whiter neighbors, and whiter schools, taking their children and their money with them.

In recent years, another approach has appeared–the splinter district. These occur when a community aims to secede from their current district; these new districts frequently adopt a new border that corresponds to racial and/or economic borders–a sort of school district gerrymandering. It’s white flight, without the actual flight.

At least two studies in the last year have provided data on this splintering, and the picture is not pretty. EdBuild, a group that is aligned with education reformers, issued the report “Fractured: The Breakdown of America’s School Districts.” It comes complete with a map that shows the location of 128 attempts to secede. (The cluster in Maine is a different phenomenon, the result of a state attempt to force massive consolidation of districts; later administrations reversed that policy, and districts rushed to return to their original form.) EdBuild found that thirty states have processes in place to facilitate school district secession.

A study released by AERA in September found that this kind of school secession in the South had increased the level of segregation. The study looked at East Baton Rouge (LA), Shelby County (TN) and five counties in Alabama; it found that secession is “eroding what has historically been one of the cornerstones of school desegregation in the South: the one-county, one-school-system jurisdiction.” In East Baton Rouge, an October 12 vote was held on the formation of the City of St. George, a wealthier, whiter enclave within the larger city. Supporters argued that they just wanted local control, particularly of their tax dollars, but a separate school district is part of the deal. The measure passed the vote, and though the process would take several years to complete, it will leave the rest of the parish that much poorer.

St. George will become an “island district,” completely surrounded by the larger district. Sometimes island districts are wealthier than the surrounding districts, though in some areas, they may be isolated pockets of poverty. They are not strictly a southern phenomenon; such fractured districts can be found in states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania. Ohio also saw a new wrinkle this year when the tiny village of Hunting Valley (pop. 700), the state’s wealthiest community, briefly won a state tax law that excused them from paying $3 million in taxes to the area school district. 

Why is there an apparent rise in such shenanigans? In 2017, Emmanuel Felton at Hechinger Reports suggested that the federal government has simply stopped monitoring and enforcing desegregation orders. Betsy DeVos has been regularly criticized for undercutting the effectiveness of the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights. That falls in line with her hearing appearance in which she could not offer a single example of discrimination that would trigger a federal intervention.

We should not pretend that putting a stop to the fracturing of school districts would be a cure-all. In 2015, reporters outlined in painful detail how the school district of Pinellas County, Florida, had systematically segregated and underfunded five elementary schools, turning them into the worst in the state. We know that tracking and gifted programs can often be used to create segregation within a school. More recently, the documentary series “America To Me” has shown that even in a diverse and integrated school, racial issues abound. Nor do charter schools show any promise in solving the issue of segregation.

History tells us that white folks who want to keep their children separate can be creative and determined about doing so. Meanwhile, the white school age population has decreased steadily, leaving whites a majority minority in U.S. schools. Allowing the continued fracturing of school districts with widespread gerrymandering and the erection of a hundred little walls are not productive ways to deal with the new reality.

Originally posted at Forbes.com

My Toddlers Can't Read

Here at the Curmudgucation Institute, the Board of Directors has taken a great interest in the printed word.

We have, for instance, entered the Me Do It phase for one of our most beloved tomes (Little Excavator, by Anna Dewdney). I am no longer allowed to read that book to the Board, but must hold it open while a Board member recites the text. We can do then same thing for select portions of that other best-seller, Digger, Dozer, Dumper. The Board also enjoys just sitting and holding a book and flipping through the pages, one at a time, just like the Institute's CEO and his wife, the Executive Breadwinner.

A Board member considers the deeper themes
of Hank the Cowdog

The Board is currently 2.5 years old. In my professional opinion, they cannot actually read. They do a great job of picking up visual cues and hints from the illustrations and context of the books, but I'm not sure they even fully grok the connection between the A-B-Cs all over the page and the words that go with that page.

I have two older children, so I've seen this movie. At some point the letter-sound connection will click. At some point they will start to learn that particular letters make particular sounds, and they will start connecting the marks on the page to the words and stories that they already know.

When that day comes, there's one thing I know for sure-- the damn reading wars arguments will still be going on.

How can this argument still be going on? How?

Look, maybe, somewhere, there's a whole balanced literacy language fan who would claim that my toddlers are now actually reading. Maybe. But they aren't. They need to add the decoding piece that allows them to sound out actual words and not just depend on random lucky guesses.

But by the same token, if you "sound out" a word that you don't know, what have you got? Nothing.

The current push for the "Science of Reading" insists that the science is settled. It isn't (you can read the article, but don't skip the comments). Even if the "brain science" were completely settled, so what? We know a lot of science about love and relationships, but that doesn't mean you can use it to scientifically make someone become the love of your life. There's a limit to how much you can program people like computers. Why this current crop of agenda-driven journalists and amateur reading analysts is so devoted to phonics and phonics only is a mystery (well, partly-- some folks depend on this stuff to make a living). What's also striking is how unscientifically the science argument is often made-- this article follows the usual pattern, built around a heart-tugging anecdote and vague on specifics.

I worked on the top end of this, working with lots of not-very-proficient readers nearing the end of their school careers. They came in a few types. Can sound the word out, but has no idea what it means. Can only bring themselves to read when the material is interesting. Will guess wildly based on first letter. Lacks the life experience to make sense-- literally to construct any sense--  of what they're reading. Reads words, but not sentences. I had poor readers who couldn't (or wouldn't decode). I had poor readers who could decode, but couldn't do anything with the decoded words. Humans who have trouble reading come in a million different configurations, and so remediation has to come in a million different configurations as well.

Why is this so hard? You can't have reading without decoding. You can't have reading with only decoding. Reading involves a whole complex of skills, and none of those skills can be taught or acquired outside of the business of actually reading. Every reading student brings a different web of experience, knowledge, interest and processor power, which means that teachers need a toolbox filled with many tools.

In the meantime, too much literally meaningless phonics drill kills an interest in reading. Too much practice with material that is too hard kills an interest in reading. Too much drill that suggests that everything can be read only one way and someone else knows that way and you don't and if you can't figure out what that other reader thinks then shame on you for being wrong wrong wrong-- well, that doesn't build anyone's interest in reading, either.

The reading wars, at their worst, are always the same thing. A bunch of chefs standing in a kitchen, trying to make a salad, with a couple of them insisting "It has to be all lettuce and nothing but lettuce" and another arguing, "No, it has to be all cucumber slices, and they have to be sliced exactly like this." Also, one of them will turn out to not actually be a chef at all-- just someone who read a book about vegetables.

I suppose the wars are exacerbated by the current decidedly unscientific notion that reading must be pushed to younger and younger ages. I can mock the stupidity of thinking that pedagogy can somehow overcome human development. I can understand that this emphasis on making kindergarten the new first or second grade is wrong and even harmful. But even I feel the pressure-- the Board whiled away the morning just playing with toy cars all over the living room and at the time I was impressed by their focus and touched by how they played together so well. But now it's the afternoon and I am second-guessing myself and wondering if I should have been providing them with more enrichment. In times like this, it's no wonder that so many people are reacting so strongly to the argument that we must have all phonics all the time right now or how will we ever get these tiny humans to read in time??!! The reading wars seem mostly fought between folks on the over-simplified extremes of the different camps.

It's a dumb argument, raging while the real work is done by folks who live in the complex middle between the poles. At some point, the Board of Directors will be ready to start actually reading, at which point, the EB and CEO will provide all manners of support, and hope to high heaven that their school does the same. They'll have to, if we're going to have the Board reading and writing novels by December of kindergarten.

Buddy, Can You Spare A Ride (To The Charter School)?

Remember the days when charter school fans were bragging that they would do more with less? That chorus has been replaced by complaints of how unfair it is that they don't get as many tax dollars for their privately-owned businesses as the public school system gets, resulting in fun new ideas like Florida's notion that charters should be entitled to a cut of any special levies that taxpayers pass to support public schools.

A new demand is surfacing now-- privatizers want taxpayers to help cover transportation costs.

Right in the front row of this new choir is Ben DeGrow. DeGrow is currently the ed policy point man for Mackinac Center, located in Michigan (motto: "We helped grow Betsy DeVos and now she's our gift to all America, you're welcome"), an advocacy thinky tank focused on "economic freedom," aka "the freedom of rich folks to get more rich." He previously worked at Denver's Independence Institute, a Libertarian thinky tank. Like many good think tank education experts, he has no actual education background. Well, okay-- according to the Mackinac website, "Ben’s classroom experiences include service as a university graduate assistant and as a substitute teacher in Michigan public schools."

DeGrow popped up at The Hill last week to make the argument for transportation scholarships (well, that, and to oddly try to accuse Jennifer Berkshire of a progressive and being weirdly obsessed with Betsy DeVos). We need these scholarships, he argues, to reduce obstacles to school choice.

We'll get to what he proposes in a moment, but first, let's note that he makes a huge, huge leap in his argument-- namely, that charter operators actually want to remove this obstacle. The patterns of segregation, the use of charters to gentrify neighborhoods, the fact that some charters do in fact provide transportation-- all of this might suggest that the transportation obstacle is just another way for charter operators to legally keep Those Peoples' Children out of their school. At a minimum, the transportation obstacle weeds out families that don't have a firm commitment to providing total support for their child (the kind of thing that Robert Pondiscio discuses at length in How The Other Half Learns).

So I'm not so sure that all charter schools really want DeGrow's "help" with this "problem." There's no way of knowing how many, exactly, but I'd bet that a large number of charters consider the transportation obstacle a feature, not a bug.

DeGrow drops some intriguing ideas into his Hill piece, like the notion that some "young and growing companies" have In recent years "have given parents in certain areas digital tools they can use to hire qualified drivers"-- so, Uber money (as we'll see, not exactly)?

His focus is mostly Michigan where one might think that good solution for the mostly-for-profit charter sector would be "dig into your pockets and pay for transportation since that's part of the cost of doing business as a school.' But no--it's a standard-issue reformy disruptor model, where instead of even suggesting that government or the charters should solve this problem, tax dollars should just be given to parents who are then "free" to figure it all out for themselves.

DeGrow has actually written a whole thinky tank paper report thing about this. The details aren't entirely compelling. For instance, a Mackinac survey of 950 charter school parents found that 200 didn't get their first choice because of transportation issues. 15%. That's similar to the percentage of students with special needs in Michigan (depending on who's counting). This recent piece puts students with special needs as 10% of public school population, but only 3% of charter school population. Mackinac ought to take a look at what the obstacles are keeping students with special needs out of charters.

DeGrow discusses other models for such a program. In the US, it's Florida again, with Step Up For Students, a tax credit scholarship program that allows you to give money to ed-related businesses instead of paying your taxes. Step Up includes a transportation scholarship program. Outside of that, we have to go to Australia for examples.

Meanwhile, the Urban Institute has been studying up on the issue, resulting in some data that DeGrow might find useful, if not exactly helpful. New Orleans doesn't come up in his discussion, but the UI paper looked at it, and in New Orleans, they've solved the "obstacle" problem easily-- charter schools are required to provide transportation. It costs them money. But then, so do books and desks and other items that are part of the cost of doing business. UI researchers did also find that transportation issues affected how schools handled recruitment.

Funding is a challenge here; there's no pretending that the gas money follows the student, or that moving five students off a single bus helps it run cheaper somehow, or that a child's cut of te bus costs could pay for anything other than inflating bicycle tires. So how is this supposed to be paid for.

DeGrow says "the concept is relatively simple"-- some "discrete" amount of state funding (aka tax dollars) could be "set aside" (aka "spent") for this program. The money would go on a debit card. From there, the families spend their travel vouchers however. Uber and Lyft don't handle under-18 folks, but DeGrow knows of a couple of hot new companies that do. Or you could pool with neighbors. DeGrow takes an entire overwritten paragraph to note that rural folks don't use ride shares much because ride share companies don't open in rural areas because it's hard to make money there.

The costs are not cheap. DeGrow wants to do a pilot in Detroit, and he estimates that rideshare costs work out to roughly $1,400 per student, or a million for 700. At $7.77 per student per day, that seems mighty optimistic (DeGrow's touching article anecdote involves a woman who travels 100 miles). In fact, UI's study also looked at Detroit and found it that it had the highest percentage of students attending outside their neighborhood-- in fact, "75 percent of nearby high-quality schools are located outside city limits." DeGrow envisions some philanthropic buy-in or special funding-- in fact, he thinks that DeVos's Education Freedom Grants (another tax alternative funding deal).

UI researcher Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj passed on a "widely shared sentiment" from New Orleans official:

If you are going to say you have school choice, it is somewhat meaningless if parents can't get to the schools they are choosing. I do think school choice and the requirement to provide transportation go hand in hand. ... Not providing it essentially negates choice.

That idea was, she reports, "less prevalent" in Detroit and NYC.

It is another face of the same old problem. Charter advocates want to have a multi-headed educational ecosystem with many parallel parts, but they want to pay for it with the same money that used to run a single system. Too many charter operators want to be in the school biz, but they don't want to actually pay the costs, and keep looking for ways to get someone else to pay the bills while they reap the revenue.

It's like a guy who says, "I want to open up a new burger joint next to Burger King, but I want the city to give me the building, and I want a cut of every meal that Burger King sells, and I wan someone else to pave the parking lot, because I find the lack of a parking lot is an obstacle to my customers."

If you want to be in the business, pay the costs.