On Line Class Discussions

Think of this as part of a series on ed tech tools that can actually be useful, now that some folks are being required to use them.

Some of my teacher friends are discovering the joys of on-line class discussions, and I myself was always a fan. The best ed tech doesn't supplant the classroom, but extends its reach, and the on line discussion format offers several appealing features.

Most importantly, it shifts the balance of power. Live class discussion favors the talkers; on-line discussion favors the writers. If you get a good system in place, you will see students who rarely say boo in class suddenly becoming powerhouses of discussion. There is also something about typing that prompts a level of honesty and openness that you don't always get in class. As roughly sixty gigazillion examples on the interwebz show us, people write things in front of everyone else that they would never say in front of everyone else. This force can be harnessed for good in your class.

As with all software, little things matter. I started on-line discussion groups with Moodle, which offers a threaded discussion feature (what many interwebz oldtimers will recognize from their favorite old bulletin board systems), and that worked great. When we were forced onto a different platform by the district's IT department, that platform offered discussion-- but in a clunky format that wanted to be Facebook and so copied Fbook's "we'll put responses to this post in any old order" feature, which was a discussion-killer. Google--well, Google brings the same deft touch that they brought to the massively failed Google Plus.

You also need to put some requirements in place. Absolutely no fake names-- everyone must post as themselves. And links to sources-- none of this "I read some article that said..."

One of the challenges was getting students to participate. I created a requirement (start at least one thread, post responses on at least two others), but it became an excellent example of how you can make people do something, but you can't make them do it well. Moodle had a genius feature that harnessed the power of judgy teenagers; I had the option of letting everyone give every post or response a score from 1 to 5. This instantly ended the practice of posting a quick "Yes" or "What she said." 

There are plenty of forum platforms out there, though you'll likely be restricted in the long term by what your IT people are willing to do. 

The on-line conversations can provide some useful springboards for in-class discussions, even essay assignments. And they can make rock stars out of your more introverted students. If you are being required to hold class "remotely" during this mess, on-line discussion is worth experimenting with, because it will still be useful when you're back in a classroom again. 

It's Okay. You Don't Have To Homeschool.

Like most teachers, I've had those student requests. End of the period, usually, they stop by the desk, usually looking downhearted. "Could I have the assignments for the next week or so," they ask. And then the cause. Death of a relative. Family emergency. A non-elective operation. A family tragedy. Some sort of unavoidable crisis that would take them away from school.

My answer was usually something along the lines of, "Just worry about taking care of yourself. We can sort out the work when you get back." On the occasions when the absence might cause extra falling-behind stress, I would offer some general direction ("We're going to be finishing the novel, wrapping up the rough draft, working in groups for the project"), but always with the same caveat-- take care of yourself first.

I've been thinking about that as school across the country shut down and social media fills up with all sorts of guides for home schooling or keeping your child organized. Color-coded hour-by-hour schedules. Guides to on-line resources and lessons. A dozen different tools to help have some semblance of school at home. And parents passing all of these back and forth, fretting about how to keep their child's education still happening. Quick! What's a Zoom and how do I get on it!!??

My actual first thought was--well, I don't remember ever seeing this level of freaking out over summer vacation. On the one hand, the concern is understandable; on the other hand, you would think some of these families had never been through summer vacation before.

But my second thought was this--

Just chill.

Stop.

Breathe.

This is a weird, scary, stressful time. If you want to create some structure and sense of forward movement by doing your version of ad hoc homeschooling, that's certainly okay. But if you'd rather not, that's okay, too.

Know that this is not like having a kid out sick, laid up at home on the sidelines while the big education train barrels on without her. The train has stopped. When it's time to get back on board, it will be more or less right where you left it.

In the meantime, depending on their age, sophistication, and personal situation, US students are living through the coronavirus scare, too. They may be sad about not getting to see their friends. They may be sick, know someone who's sick, be worried about getting sick. Their parents may be among the many who, despite DC's half-assed efforts, can't afford to take time off; they might even be among those who have lost a big chunk of income entirely. The students might be home alone, or shipped out to someplace-not-home while the parents are working. A big chunk of their day may be taken up with getting to food for breakfast and lunch.

It may be that some sort of regular daily "lesson," or school-like activity will be the thing to help them calm and center, and that's okay. But it may be that they've got too much going on to focus on or care about schooly stuff. This is, after all, one of the reasons we have actual schools as places where students can, if need be, leave behind that chaos of the world.

There are going to be some interesting side effects to this coronaviral Grand Pause, lots of chances to say, "So if we can suspend that rule for a pandemic, why are we bothering with it the rest of the time?" I think it also gives us a chance to question the all-American focus on frantic balls-to-the-wall forward motion, the notion that if we aren't Doing Something Right This Second, then we're screwing up and life is leaving us behind. Would it really hurt to pause and reflect a bit more often? Now we have a chance to try it out.

Yes, some schools are going to try to remotely educate their students. I hope they aren't going to try to hard, and I hope their students' families aren't going to feel too much pressure to keep up. I hope that parents spend some time with their children, that children slow down enough to do things they enjoy. I hope they read a book. I hope they grab onto the space and time and strength they need to deal with whatever they're feeling and wrestling with in the midst of all this.

And I hope that those of you who are parents can turn off the voice in your head that keeps telling you you'd better get that kid in front of some sort of educational something right away or something terrible will happen. If it's taking most of what you've got to help your kids keep it together, then know that you're doing the important stuff, and your big color-coded home curriculum design plan can just wait.

ICYMI: I'm a Grandfather Again Edition (3/15)

Beware the Ides of March, indeed. It's been a busy week and I've been a little behind on my own reading, so the list might be a little short today (and late, too). But my new grandson is beautiful.

Texas Takeover in Shepherd

A school takeover in Texas turns into a big fat mess, and the courts aren't much help.

Adios, John White

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider bids adieu to John White, who is now officially finally not in charge of education in Louisiana.

Please do a bad job of putting your courses online

Rebecca Barrett-Fox offers a perspective on the virus-induced move to online schooling. Maybe there are a few other things that are more important.

The Vicious Attack on Sweetwater Union District

Thomas Ultican has done all the homework on this tale of a California district that has been under continuous attack by privatizers.

Once Again, Teachers Are First Responders  

Nancy Flanagan reflects on how teachers often end up on the front lines when it's crunch time.

Audrey Watters and Ed Tech crisis response

If you aren't a subscriber to Watters' newsletter, you're missing important stuff. Here are some thoughts about what can go wrong with the virus-induced school closings.

Penguin Cam

Edinburgh Zoo has a live penguin cam. When you need a break from all the stress and worry--well, it's penguins!

Ohio's Charter War Fallout

10th period blog notes that Ohio has so many cyber-school students, the transition during the shutdown ought to be easily tapping into that expertise. Why isn't it?

Doubts Raised About Active Shooter Drills  

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette takes a look at a report questioning the effects of active shooter drills in schools.

Post-Janus Union Busters Not Done Yet

If you are a teacher and you spend time on Facebook, you've probably heard from those folks at My Pay My Say, their chirpy stock photo reminding you that you don't have to pay those nasty union dues.

These initiatives have been popping up ever since the Janus case gave a Supreme Court okee dokee to the idea of freeloaders in a union. Teachers who don't already live in Right To Work states have received a steady stream of postcards inviting them to dump their union; the Facebook initiative is just more of the same.

They look totally legit

In Pennsylvania, we also heard from Free To Teach, yet another union-busting group functioning as a front for the Commonwealth Foundation which is itself part of the State Policy Network, a national network of right-wing advocacy and lobbying groups. Free To Teach currently says its mission is simply sending out mailers.

My Pay My Say is also linked to the State Policy Network through their sponsor-- the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Also, they love them some stock photos, which is curious when you think about it, because surely they could just get some professional photos taken of the millions of teachers who support their work.

According to Sourcewatch, the Mackinac Center is "a right-wing pressure group based in Michigan." They have championed right to work, opposed environmental regulations, and even own a piece of the blame for Flint's water problems. They have long made it a goal to "outlaw government collective bargaining in Michigan," and they have lent a cash-filled hand to other similarly-inclined groups around the country.

Their funding is opaque, and they prefer not to reveal the folks who back them. Sourcewatch did some research, and none of it will surprise you. The Waltons, some hide-the-donor foundations, the Kochs, and a chunk of money from various DeVos family members (including Betsy). The Center is not messing around; their 2017 990 form shows them to be an $11 million operation.

Their pitch is the same as always-- don't you want to quit that stupid union? On their website, you can go to the page for your state, click on a few items, and they will take care of everything you need to dump the union. Benefits of dumping said union?

Your take home pay will increase.
Your benefits will remain the same.
Your money will not be spent on politics or programs you don’t support.

You get to keep more money while still taking a free ride on the contract your union negotiated. Your benefits will totally remain the same, until the future contracts when the district will take your badly weakened union to the cleaners. The last point is also important, since a central part of the Janus argument was that all union activities are political, including contract negotiations.

When filing out the form, you get a choice of five reasons that you're ditching the union:

I don't agree with my union's political activity.
Financial cost of membership.
Worries about corruption.
I don't see the benefit.
Other.

I would recommend that folks who want to check any of these take a nice long visit to a right to work state and see how the blissful heaven of a disempowered union looks.

Look, my beefs with the unions over the years were many. But if you think the absence of a union would somehow lead to school districts being more generous to their teachers, I have a bridge over some magic bean-growing swampland to sell you. Do you think the district will pay you better because you're awesome and they know it's the right thing to do? Then you are a dope.

The Mackinac Center was among the groups backing the Janus lawsuit, along with many of the usual wealthy union foes. He was represented by the Liberty Justice Center, another hard-right outfit, and National Right To Work Legal Defense Fund which--well, it's right there in the name. Janus never had to suffer any consequences for the shafting of his union; after the case was over, he landed a job with the Illinois Policy Institute, one of the rightwing groups that funded his lawsuit. Mr. "I Went Into This Work Because I Care About Kids" took a job touring the country as an anti-union speaker. In one odd little coda, the National Review awarded him a newly-created Whittaker Chambers Award, and the Chambers family protested, saying Janus's efforts "run counter to the instincts and experience of Whittaker Chambers." The award, only ever given twice, was scrapped.

But Janus and the union busting crowd are not done.

They've been shopping about thirty follow-up cases, suing to have the union give back all the dues it ever collected from them. They appear to be using the same strategy as before-- zip on up through the lower courts with unfavorable rulings so that they can go to the big show, and so Janus has petitioned the Supreme Court to hear his case.

This case is aimed at literally busting the unions. Janus himself is suing over a whopping $3,000, but of course that's not the point. If the unions can be compelled to refund the back dues collected from every union member who left after Janus, the resulting bill would be crippling. The argument on Janus's side seems to be that the Supreme Court ruling should be retroactive, somehow, while so far lower courts have ruled that unions were following the law as it was before the Supreme Court decided to rewrite it came to a fresher understanding of it.

So at the moment, we wait to see if the Supremes decide to hear this disingenuous bullshit appeal, in which case God only knows what will happen, or they will decline and the previous rulings will stand and the union-busting crowd will probably keep trying with the other 29 cases before hatching their next strategy for stifling those damned unions. Stay tuned, and for heaven's sake, think about the Supreme Court when you go to vote in November.

One final note-- remember that advertisers on Facebook pay based on how many clicks. Every time you click on that stupid ad, you cost the My Pay My Say folks just a little more money. Also, they have a Facebook page, just in case you wanted to share some of your thoughts with them. Just sayin'.

DeVos Wants To Give Teachers PD Vouchers

It's not the dumbest education policy idea to ever come out of DC. Betsy DeVos is continuing to champion idea that she has pushed before-- giving teachers professional development vouchers and letting them go shop for their own professional development experiences.

When floated in 2019, the idea was obviously not about kind thoughts about teachers or even philosophical consistency for the choice-loving secretary. It was a way to chop Title II out of the budget. It's a funny thing, but the words "choice" and "freedom" often end up meaning "We are going to spend way less money on this and just let you find your own way." But it looks as if the department  has found a way to move ahead.

Still, she's not wrong about one thing:

I've spoken with hundreds of teachers as I've traveled across the country and hosted teacher roundtables at the department, and I heard far too often how limited most teachers are in their own professional development. They have little to no say in the courses they take. They have very little freedom to explore subject areas that interest them.

Okay, the "spoken with hundreds of teachers" seems unlikely, but the "teacher PD mostly sucks" part won't get you an argument in most faculty lunch rooms. Particularly since the days that PD became welded to standards and Things That Will Raise Test Scores, leaving teachers of non-tested subjects twisting in the wind on every PD day.

So why not give teachers vouchers and let them shop for PD that they care about, are interested in, might even find useful? Here are the problems with such a system.

$$$$

How big a voucher? Nobody knows at this point, but the current version of the idea involves waaayyyyyyyyyy less money than Title II-- like $200 million to cover all the teachers in the US, which would amount to about $40 per teacher if we tried to hit every Pre-K through 12 teacher. The department is apparently making noises about some sort of PD competition; I'm not even sure how that would work.

Bottom line is that districts now save money by buying PD in bulk. Teacher PDS vouchers would either require teachers to bundle themselves to cover costs, PD vendors to come up with clever ays to make more money from poorer customers, or the government to just spend more on teacher PD.

Shopping

When DeVos was talking to all those teachers, I'll bet very few also said, "I need one more time-sucking non-teaching task to eat up my time." But PD vouchers would require teachers to sit down and plow through the various catalogs and directories and advertising fliers shoved in some corner of their desk, looking for something to spend their voucher on. Yes, this will be one more fun task on which to spend their copious free time.

Read this account from a teacher who went through a similar program. It seemed like a cool idea at first glance, but shopping crushed much of the staff.

The PD That Teachers Actually Want

Ed Week quotes Stephanie Hirsch, former big cheese at Learning Forward. Teachers, she observes, "are not asking for a PD voucher program—they’re asking for time for collaborative learning and problem-solving with their colleagues."

A lot of the best PD is produced in-house, colleague to colleague. How would vouchers factor into that? Would teachers be able to go ahead and set up in-house PD and use the vouchers for pizza?

And speaking of "could teachers" questions, who is going to manage the PD approval process that has to go along with this. Pennsylvania has a system in place for certifying that an even counts for PD hours, but would that satisfy the feds? If the end result of this system is "you must select your PD from the federally-approved list of vendors," it is not going to be much better than the current system.

The department says they want to fix the current "scattershot" approach to PD. This proposal would seem to do the opposite of fixing that.

Giving teachers control of their own PD, as if they were actual grown smart professionals, is a great idea. This doesn't seem like the best way to do it.

DeVos Actually Sparks Bipartisan Action In Senate

You may recall that Betsy DeVos really, really, really hates the idea of forgiving the loans that students took out to attend what turned out to be fraudulent predatory not-so-good for-profit universities, to the point that when she had to sign off on loan forgiveness paperwork left over from the previous administration, she felt compelled to add "with extreme displeasure" to her signature.

Either the department had some real problems executing the requirements of the rules requiring loan forgiveness, or they implemented an impressive federal-level program of institutional foot-dragging and deliberate "gosh, we'll get right on that" bullshit. I'm pretty sure I have a good idea which one Judge Sallie "I'm not sending anyone to jail yet, but it's good to know I have the power" Kim was thinking as she fined DeVos and the department.

All of that was just a warm-up for the main event, in which DeVos rewrote the rules of loan forgiveness. Her sales pitch was "It will save the taxpayers $11 billion," but that was because she rewrote the rules so that almost nobody was going to be forgiven. Economist Doug Webber was one of many to point out that it was mathematically impossible for many of the affected students to ever get full reimbursement. DeVos called the formula "scientifically robust," but since she'd already testified that she didn't think all of These People should get forgiveness, it was clear what she was robustly pursuing. Students had to prove that the school was deliberately lying, and they had to prove that they had been harmed. Meaning you had to prove that you wouldn't have been poor anyway, because if you were going to be poor anyway, then being bilked by the school hadn't really hurt you.

It was all part and parcel of the DeVosian favoritism for businesses over, well, anybody who doesn't own a business. But this saga has yielded one extraordinary not-awful moment-- a bipartisan agreement by the current US Senate.

No kidding. The Democrats in the Senate determined to undo the DeVos rules, and ten GOP senators actually joined in. They even used one of those funky obscure senate rules to do it, thereby pleasing the many, many, many groups opposed to DeVos's rule. Trump could still veto the thing, but as always, it's not clear that he really follows much of what's going on in the DeVos department. Also, I understand that he has a few other issues on his plate right now.

Administration Matters

This tweet turned up the other day.

I interviewed a teacher who is leaving the profession in June. I asked her why she was quitting.

Her response:
“I was told to teach to the test...that if it’s not a test-taking skill, don’t teach it. I didn’t become a teacher to help kids become better test-takers.”#EdChat

— Fixing Education (@FixingEducation) March 9, 2020

I wish the teacher hadn't slipped into passive voice. I wish she had said, "Principal Testy McScoresuck told me to teach to the test." Because administrators like this need to be outed. They need to be held up before the world as people helping to facilitate the creeping educational malpractice rooted in high stakes testing.

A manager's job-- and not just the management of a school, but any manager-- is to create the system, environment and supports that get his people to do their very best work. When it rains, it's the manager's job to hold an umbrella over his people. When the wind starts blowing tree limbs across the landscape, it's the manager's job to stand before the storm and bat the debris away. And when the Folks at the Top start sending down stupid directives, it's a manager's job to protect his people the best he possibly can.

NCLB, Race to the Top, Common Core, the high stakes Big Standardized Tests-- each of these bad policies is bad for many reason, but the biggest one is this: instead of helping teachers do their jobs, these policies interfere with teachers doing their jobs, even mandate doing their jobs badly. In each case a bunch of educational amateurs pushed their way into schools and said, "You're doing it all wrong from now on, you have to do it like this," like medically untrained non-doctors barging into a surgical procedure to say, "Stop using that sterile scalpel and use this rusty shovel instead."

That was bad. But it is base betrayal when, in that situation, management turns to its trained, professional workers and says, "Well, you heard the man. Pick up that rusty shovel."

NCLB and its "every student will be above average by 2014" was bullshit, and everyone in education knew it was bullshit, that by 2013 every school would be either failing or cheating, but too many school administrators didn't say, "You just do your job. I'm going to spend an hour of every day calling our legislators and explaining what bullshit this is." Instead too many said, "Look, here are some test practice books. We'll give some practice tests, identify the students who are close enough to drag over the line, keep our heads down, and maybe they'll fix the rules by the time it becomes hopeless." In other words, "You heard the man. Pick up the rusty shovel and at least pretend to use it."

By the time Common Core, Race to the Top waivers and waiver lite rolled around to ramp up the high stakes on the back end and attach amateur-hour standards on the front end, many administrators were already broken. Instead of "Oh, hey, wait a minute," they responded with "Well, maybe this will blow over" or "Nothing we can do about it but bend to the state" or "Get in there and teach to the test."

The argument has been that the federal and state authorities have mandated all of this, and in some states where test results have been used as a method of targeting public schools for destruction, the emphasis on the Big Standardized Test has been hard to avoid. In most states, the BS Test score has become part of every public school's profile, and it's hard to resist the urge to do something about going out in public with that big black eye.

I get all of that. I get the tremendous pressure that some administrators must feel to teach to the test. But it's still wrong. And when the rain starts, the role of a good manager is not to stand to one side and say, "Why the hell are you getting so wet, anyway?"

Administrators have offered a wide variety of responses over the years from the naive (Just teach the standards and the test scores will take care of themselves) to the heroic (Just do your job, and I'll manage whatever flak comes at us). And the same policy approach in a building can come with a variety of faces from sympathetic (I know this sucks, and I'm sorry) to abusive (Get your damn numbers up or I will be assigning you lunch monitor duty forever, you miserable slacker). Sometimes, of course, there are two or three faces involved in the same building.

Bottom line: when education policy is dictated from the top down, it often arrives at the classroom door wearing the face of the building administrator, and the amount of damage done by the bad policies of the last two decades has been affected, for better or worse, by district administrators.