The Institute staff and board of directors are headed for a corporate retreat in a place where the internet doesn't really reach, so things will be quiet here for a bit. But before I go, here's some reading for you to do. Sorry for all the paywalls today.
There have been several recurriing themes in this week's coverage. For instance, lots of folks have noticed that Betsy DeVos's current stance on getting schools open, and using federal muscle to force it, appears to be a complete reversal of her long-held beliefs.
Here's Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat with a pretty good take. Erica Green at the New York Times also offered some DeVosian historical context.
But other folks focused more closely on just how bad DeVos is at her job. Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post wanted to know who the heck thought it would be a good idea to send DeVos out onto the Sunday shows. Jessica Calarco is at the New York Times wondering what the heck DeVos is thinking. And Charles Pierce at Esquire observed, among other things, that "the only thing DeVos knows about education is how to turn a buck on it."
Local dispatches have thrown the pandemic school issues into sharper relief. A Missouri school district wants parents to sign a waiver of liability for any illness of death that happens to occur. Ohio provides yet more examples of public schools getting funding cuts while charters hoover up some of that sweet small business loan cash. In Orange County, a "bold" idea to reopen school as if nothing unusual was going on turns out to come mostly from charter school fans. And from Wyoming comes this top-notch piece of reporting about a school board meeting that shows some of the attitudes and ideas roll out in unreal time.
Nancy Bailey blogs about some ideas for facing the new school year, and people continue to point out that it really will take some money to do this right, but the headline of the week award may go to The Nation, with their piece entitled "There are literally no good options for educating our kids this fall." Actually, for the "We've got the money; tough noogies for everyone else" crowd, there is one option-- hire teachers to come homeschool your kids.
In other news. Education Next has a brief of research that suggests that No Excuses schools have some problems (quel surprise!) just as KIPP decides that it's time for a motto change and Schools Matter has some thoughts.
I'll be back in ten days or so. In the meantime, check out the blogroll that I keep here, wear a mask, and be kind to each other.
Sunday, July 19, 2020
Friday, July 17, 2020
Everything's Made Up (And Nobody Is Behind)
This is the opportunity we're missing, but to grab it would require us to look at things that some of us would rather not look at.
We can start with the notion that students are currently "falling behind." Well, now-- behind what, exactly? Is there some line scribed by the Hand of God in the intellectual sand that tells us, yes, a child who has been on earth 193 months should have crossed this absolute line on the One True Path of intellectual growth?
No, because it's all made up. The line that says "This is where they should be" is made up. In fact, the notion that there is a single path along which progress should be measured is also made up. Hell, this should not be news, because it wasn't that long ago that we moved all the lines, accompanied by declarations about rigor and challenge and other baloney that posited that making kindergarten the new first grade was somehow a good idea because it would push students "ahead" of that made up line on that made up path. none of this "ahead/behind" baloney is based on anything scientific or objective or rooted in anything except that some people with power decided "This is the rule we'd like to make up."
People are really struggling. There are so many nuts and bolts questions that are coming up in the face of whatever-the-hell is going to happen in a few weeks, like "If a teacher is sent to quarantine for fourteen days, does she have to use her sick days" and the thing about most of these questions is that they involve made up rules that were made up without any inkling that we would find ourselves here some day. The rules about how many sick days a teacher can have are made up. The rules about what they can be used for are made up. And the most important implication of this is that to deal with brand new situations, people will have to make up some new rules (which will also be made up).
My colleague Nancy Flanagan has observed repeatedly that nobody is coming up with solutions that are remotely outside the box, and I think she's right, and I think a big reason for that is a desire (which in times of uncertainty and general messiness inflames into a burning gut-level need) to hold onto the fiction that the box is a Real Thing, and objective Box of Truth that emerged fully-formed from a burning bush.
It's not. The box is made up.
Now, I'm not suggesting that "made up" means fake or false or stupid. We make up rules all the time, often for very good reasons. "Drive on the right-hand side of the road" is an arbitrary made up rule, but it's a very useful made up rule. Some rules are rooted in experience, the collectively learning of things that work and things that don't. Some rules are rules because they have always been rules, but those reasons are long lost to memory. Some rules are the result of expert judgment exercised by trained experts who have expertly studied the issue, and some are the result of that youtube video you saw last night.
We US citizens have an uneasy relationship with the made-up nature of rules. Our religious ancestors believed they were following rules literally handed down by God. Some of our founding fathers, following the Enlightenment ideas of the time, believed they were using reason and intellect to uncover the rules hard-wired into the universe. We were going to be better than those European royal mopes who just made rules up to suit their moods and self-interest (even if many founding fathers had trouble actually applying the rules they discerned to their own actual lives).
Making shit up is what humans do. I have what I call the 5% rule-- 95% of everything is just stuff that humans make up, and then, having made it up, examine it with great weight and import as if it had just fallen out of the sky and not out of a human head. We do things like decide a "week" will have seven days, and then ponder the deep significance of having seven days in a week. 5% of everything is actually important, actually matters, actually has weight and significance. The trick here is that none of us can agree on what the 5% is. Plus, if your 5% includes things like loving and supporting the people around you, well, then, that means going along with some of their 5%. It gets tricky.
Almost everything is made up, and that's not an indictment of it. The question is not, "Is this made up or not" because it probably is. The question is, "Is it made well, based on evidence and wisdom and good intent."
But I digress.
Pretty much everything about school is made up, an artificial construct created by parents and politicians and teachers and tradition--oh, so much tradition-- as well as a few decades of predatory profiteer activity. But in normal times, much of that stuff, from "students sit in a desk in a room" to "everyone eats lunch together in a big room" to "all students come at the same time and leave at the same time" works just fine. Some of it, from "this Big Standardized Test measures the intellectual growth and capabilities of students" to "anyone with a pulse can run a classroom," has been destructive. "Everyone needs to get back in the box, right now, and act as if nothing unusual is going on," seems like potentially a really bad idea.
We are clutching hard to our made up rules these days. I don't think it's just the pandemic. Nobody has personified the view that all these rules are just made up shit more than Donald Trump. We have held tight to our conventions about government and elected officials for what seems like ages, but Trump's whole life is about ignoring all rules and conventions. "It's not actually a rule," he says, "unless someone can actually do something to me for breaking it." For people who want to believe we live by laws and rules and not just a bunch of made up shit that exists only as long as we all agree to ac t like it exists, these have been really scary times.
And you know who make great rules followers? Who believe you just don't break the rules because you just don't? Teachers. It is one of their greatest weaknesses.
Back when I was a yearbook advisor, the first thing I told each new crop of student leaders was that when planning the new book, they were to ignore the old books. Imagine designing a book from scratch. What would you do? How would you do it? Even if you reach a conclusion identical to last year's book, at least you'll know you're doing it for a better reason than "That's what they did last year."
We could be doing that with schools right now, saying "If we were designing schools from scratch right now with zero rules in place, what would we do." Instead, the discussion (led mostly by non-teachers) is about how to keep as many of our made up rules as possible intact.
You would think reformsters would be all over this opportunity to get outside the box, but they've always been mostly about preserving the made up rules--just tweaking them to add a few that let privateers make a buck. It has always been a useful for tactic for them to act as if public schools are locked in a solid titanium box brought down by the gods and unalterable by human hands; that way, clearly, the only solution to supplant the public system with something else.And now even Betsy DeVos has dropped her noise about letting a thousand virtual flowers bloom and instead argues that school this fall should look just like every other fall.
If we started from scratch, one would hope that we decided that trained professionals in a setting that maximized student safety and provided education for every single child in the country would still be on the program. For me, that's the 5% of public education, and all the rest is less important, or only important insofar as it helps us reach those goals. (Charter and voucher fans are welcome to tell me how their favorite ideas would help, and I will go ahead an explain, once again, why they're wrong.)
But step one is to recognize that all of this stuff is made up, created by humans with a range iof intents and wisdom, and as humans we are perfectly capable of unmakimg it up and remaking something new up in its place. We can stop the stupid noise about where students are relatively to some made up standard and stop worrying about how a real pandemic response might require us to rewrite some made up rules.
We like the rules. We like the feeling of a solid earth under our feet. We like feeling that stuff came from some higher source than Made Up By Regular Humans. Just watch as July and August unfold-- I predict that the majority of school district administrators will wait to see what other districts do, and then adopt that plan, as if those other administrators have some pipeline to wisdom that local leaders do not. Shame on them. All the plans that come will be made up stuff. Have the nerve to make something up that best fits your local district. There is no box, and nobody is coming to save you with a Higher Truth. You're going to have to make something up.
We can start with the notion that students are currently "falling behind." Well, now-- behind what, exactly? Is there some line scribed by the Hand of God in the intellectual sand that tells us, yes, a child who has been on earth 193 months should have crossed this absolute line on the One True Path of intellectual growth?
 |
| No box. Also, no spoon. |
People are really struggling. There are so many nuts and bolts questions that are coming up in the face of whatever-the-hell is going to happen in a few weeks, like "If a teacher is sent to quarantine for fourteen days, does she have to use her sick days" and the thing about most of these questions is that they involve made up rules that were made up without any inkling that we would find ourselves here some day. The rules about how many sick days a teacher can have are made up. The rules about what they can be used for are made up. And the most important implication of this is that to deal with brand new situations, people will have to make up some new rules (which will also be made up).
My colleague Nancy Flanagan has observed repeatedly that nobody is coming up with solutions that are remotely outside the box, and I think she's right, and I think a big reason for that is a desire (which in times of uncertainty and general messiness inflames into a burning gut-level need) to hold onto the fiction that the box is a Real Thing, and objective Box of Truth that emerged fully-formed from a burning bush.
It's not. The box is made up.
Now, I'm not suggesting that "made up" means fake or false or stupid. We make up rules all the time, often for very good reasons. "Drive on the right-hand side of the road" is an arbitrary made up rule, but it's a very useful made up rule. Some rules are rooted in experience, the collectively learning of things that work and things that don't. Some rules are rules because they have always been rules, but those reasons are long lost to memory. Some rules are the result of expert judgment exercised by trained experts who have expertly studied the issue, and some are the result of that youtube video you saw last night.
We US citizens have an uneasy relationship with the made-up nature of rules. Our religious ancestors believed they were following rules literally handed down by God. Some of our founding fathers, following the Enlightenment ideas of the time, believed they were using reason and intellect to uncover the rules hard-wired into the universe. We were going to be better than those European royal mopes who just made rules up to suit their moods and self-interest (even if many founding fathers had trouble actually applying the rules they discerned to their own actual lives).
Making shit up is what humans do. I have what I call the 5% rule-- 95% of everything is just stuff that humans make up, and then, having made it up, examine it with great weight and import as if it had just fallen out of the sky and not out of a human head. We do things like decide a "week" will have seven days, and then ponder the deep significance of having seven days in a week. 5% of everything is actually important, actually matters, actually has weight and significance. The trick here is that none of us can agree on what the 5% is. Plus, if your 5% includes things like loving and supporting the people around you, well, then, that means going along with some of their 5%. It gets tricky.
Almost everything is made up, and that's not an indictment of it. The question is not, "Is this made up or not" because it probably is. The question is, "Is it made well, based on evidence and wisdom and good intent."
But I digress.
Pretty much everything about school is made up, an artificial construct created by parents and politicians and teachers and tradition--oh, so much tradition-- as well as a few decades of predatory profiteer activity. But in normal times, much of that stuff, from "students sit in a desk in a room" to "everyone eats lunch together in a big room" to "all students come at the same time and leave at the same time" works just fine. Some of it, from "this Big Standardized Test measures the intellectual growth and capabilities of students" to "anyone with a pulse can run a classroom," has been destructive. "Everyone needs to get back in the box, right now, and act as if nothing unusual is going on," seems like potentially a really bad idea.
We are clutching hard to our made up rules these days. I don't think it's just the pandemic. Nobody has personified the view that all these rules are just made up shit more than Donald Trump. We have held tight to our conventions about government and elected officials for what seems like ages, but Trump's whole life is about ignoring all rules and conventions. "It's not actually a rule," he says, "unless someone can actually do something to me for breaking it." For people who want to believe we live by laws and rules and not just a bunch of made up shit that exists only as long as we all agree to ac t like it exists, these have been really scary times.
And you know who make great rules followers? Who believe you just don't break the rules because you just don't? Teachers. It is one of their greatest weaknesses.
Back when I was a yearbook advisor, the first thing I told each new crop of student leaders was that when planning the new book, they were to ignore the old books. Imagine designing a book from scratch. What would you do? How would you do it? Even if you reach a conclusion identical to last year's book, at least you'll know you're doing it for a better reason than "That's what they did last year."
We could be doing that with schools right now, saying "If we were designing schools from scratch right now with zero rules in place, what would we do." Instead, the discussion (led mostly by non-teachers) is about how to keep as many of our made up rules as possible intact.
You would think reformsters would be all over this opportunity to get outside the box, but they've always been mostly about preserving the made up rules--just tweaking them to add a few that let privateers make a buck. It has always been a useful for tactic for them to act as if public schools are locked in a solid titanium box brought down by the gods and unalterable by human hands; that way, clearly, the only solution to supplant the public system with something else.And now even Betsy DeVos has dropped her noise about letting a thousand virtual flowers bloom and instead argues that school this fall should look just like every other fall.
If we started from scratch, one would hope that we decided that trained professionals in a setting that maximized student safety and provided education for every single child in the country would still be on the program. For me, that's the 5% of public education, and all the rest is less important, or only important insofar as it helps us reach those goals. (Charter and voucher fans are welcome to tell me how their favorite ideas would help, and I will go ahead an explain, once again, why they're wrong.)
But step one is to recognize that all of this stuff is made up, created by humans with a range iof intents and wisdom, and as humans we are perfectly capable of unmakimg it up and remaking something new up in its place. We can stop the stupid noise about where students are relatively to some made up standard and stop worrying about how a real pandemic response might require us to rewrite some made up rules.
We like the rules. We like the feeling of a solid earth under our feet. We like feeling that stuff came from some higher source than Made Up By Regular Humans. Just watch as July and August unfold-- I predict that the majority of school district administrators will wait to see what other districts do, and then adopt that plan, as if those other administrators have some pipeline to wisdom that local leaders do not. Shame on them. All the plans that come will be made up stuff. Have the nerve to make something up that best fits your local district. There is no box, and nobody is coming to save you with a Higher Truth. You're going to have to make something up.
Thursday, July 16, 2020
FL: The Broad Outlines of the PPP Cash-in
So it turns out that all you have to do to get some charter and voucher schools to admit they're businesses is just wave some sweet, sweet business-purposed money at them. We've heard the individual stories from here and there about this, but a friend of the Curmudgucation Institute sent along an astonishing piece of data crunching.
I don't have a handy way to attach a spreadsheet to this post, but you can do the work yourself if you want to head to the Small Business Administration site then start looking up other info for your state. I'm going to give you the big sweeping picture here. Just how many schools edu-flavored businesses had their hands out in Florida?
Charters
There are around 658 charter schools operating in Florida. At least 102 signed up for a PPP small business loan. Loans are okayed for a range of monies; the highest top amount a charter was okayed for is $5 million. River City Academy, Doral Academy, Youth Co-op Inc, Discovery Education Services, and Odyssey Charter School Inc were at the top for these biggest loans (minimum is $2 million).
Private
Almost 400 private schools declared themselves small businesses. Of those, about 140 were just private schools, with the rest actually private religious schools (if they didn't call themselves religious, but had religious language all over their websites, they were counted as religious).
Of the non-religious private schools, about half (75) are also voucher schools. So not only grabbing taxpayer dollars via PPP, but also living on taxpayer dollars via one of Florida's many voucher programs. But of the 250+ private religious schools, only about 35 schools aren't taking vouchers. Everybody else on the list is double-dipping for Jesus. That makes roughly 300 voucher school signed up for PPP loans. In all fairness, I should note that Florida has something like 2000 voucher-accepting schools, so plenty are apparently happy to single dip at this time.
Other
There are some other edu-flavored outfits lined up for money as well, including some consulting firms.
Special Award
Special recognition goers to the Academica chain, a massive money-grabbing machine of edu-business, with schools in several of these categories. But it looks like at least ten of these beneficiaries are Academica properties.
Some grand totals
If every charter school on the list got only their minimum amount, that would add up to $47,850,000. If every private religious school got bottom dollar, that would be $96,450,000. So, a lot like real money. And you should remember that while PPP loans are loans, not grants, they all contain an option for forgiveness under certain conditions. So that's almost at least $1.5 billion in taxpayer dollars (or it may be more accurate to say taxpayer's grandchildren's dollars) to help keep some education entrepreneurs afloat in Florida.
I think I would admit to being a business for that kind of money, too. In the meantime, as soon as the institute's COO teaches me more about excel, I'll get back to this pile of info.
Charters
There are around 658 charter schools operating in Florida. At least 102 signed up for a PPP small business loan. Loans are okayed for a range of monies; the highest top amount a charter was okayed for is $5 million. River City Academy, Doral Academy, Youth Co-op Inc, Discovery Education Services, and Odyssey Charter School Inc were at the top for these biggest loans (minimum is $2 million).
Private
Almost 400 private schools declared themselves small businesses. Of those, about 140 were just private schools, with the rest actually private religious schools (if they didn't call themselves religious, but had religious language all over their websites, they were counted as religious).
Of the non-religious private schools, about half (75) are also voucher schools. So not only grabbing taxpayer dollars via PPP, but also living on taxpayer dollars via one of Florida's many voucher programs. But of the 250+ private religious schools, only about 35 schools aren't taking vouchers. Everybody else on the list is double-dipping for Jesus. That makes roughly 300 voucher school signed up for PPP loans. In all fairness, I should note that Florida has something like 2000 voucher-accepting schools, so plenty are apparently happy to single dip at this time.
Other
There are some other edu-flavored outfits lined up for money as well, including some consulting firms.
Special Award
Special recognition goers to the Academica chain, a massive money-grabbing machine of edu-business, with schools in several of these categories. But it looks like at least ten of these beneficiaries are Academica properties.
Some grand totals
If every charter school on the list got only their minimum amount, that would add up to $47,850,000. If every private religious school got bottom dollar, that would be $96,450,000. So, a lot like real money. And you should remember that while PPP loans are loans, not grants, they all contain an option for forgiveness under certain conditions. So that's almost at least $1.5 billion in taxpayer dollars (or it may be more accurate to say taxpayer's grandchildren's dollars) to help keep some education entrepreneurs afloat in Florida.
I think I would admit to being a business for that kind of money, too. In the meantime, as soon as the institute's COO teaches me more about excel, I'll get back to this pile of info.
Report: Zuckerberg’s Favorite Digital Ed Program Is All Sizzle, No Steak
Summit Schools started out in 2003 with a low-tech focus on personalized education; in 2014, Mark Zuckerberg discovered the school and decided to gift it not just with money, but with technology. Zuckerberg was fresh off a high-profile edu-failure in Newark, and he had gleaned one particular lesson from that:
The most important lesson we've learned is to focus on problems we have some unique ability to help solve.
When the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative took form, its educational focus was on digital personalized learning. And Summit seemed like the perfect vehicle for that push. Summit Schools created the Summit Learning Platform, an algorithm-driven software system that delivers lessons to students via computer. Human “mentors” are on duty nearby to help out, but the program is the teacher.
Not everyone has loved it. Parents have occasionally revolted. The program has been accused of racism. But the program, offered free of charge, has spread to about 400 schools, making it one of the most successful digital platforms out there. Then, in 2018, Summit spun the digital program off into a non-profit entity whose initial four-person board included Diane Tavenner, Summit founder; Priscilla Chan; and Peggy Alford, the CFO for CZI.
Given that Summit is now widely used, seen as a model for personalized digital learning, and operating under the wing of a top US tech billionaire, it seems worthwhile to look under the hood. The NEPC, a non-profit education policy research center located in the School of Education at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has done just that.
Here are some of the major findings from the report.
The first is how “reluctant, and in many instances, unwilling to provide basic information about its educational program and platform” Summit turned out to be. The 2018 non-profit (T.L.P. Education) now operates as a kind of cloak of secrecy over many aspects of the operation. The experience of the researchers echoes the experience of parents, who often find Summit unresponsive. NEPC found the staff “unfailingly polite, but nonresponsive.” Requests were ignored, side-stepped, or greeted with some version of “we don’t have any information about that.”
Summit has constructed an image as a successful program. It repeatedly claims to be “evidence-based” and “grounded in science,” but it has never allowed an independent evaluation of any aspect of its product. Summit’s own self-promotion depends largely on anecdotes and testimonials. And some of its claims stretch credulity; it has said that 100% of its students are “eligible for a four-year college,” but no Summit charter school has ever graduated 100% of its senior class. Summit also claims that its students graduate college at twice the national average, but told NEPC that it has no records related to these claims.
Summit rejects the notion that standardized tests can measure the cognitive skills that they claim to prize, and they are absolutely correct to do so. But as NEPC notes, Summit’s own Cognitive Skills Rubric seems not to have been checked for either validity or reliability.
Many of Summit’s claims seem more like the puffery of marketing than the rigor of science, with the public record providing no support and Summit either unwilling or unable to provide evidence. But marketing, NEPC finds, is a big part of Summit’s success. It has attracted money and support from many major players, including the Gates Foundation, Silicon Schools Fund, and XQ Institute (the ed reform project of Laurene Powell Jobs). In 2015, Summit made a deal with Facebook to enhance software and develop a nationwide marketing strategy. This has included a 2017 publication, The Science of Summit, ”which purports to show that SPS’s pedagogical approach is research-based.” NEPC finds the report offers no actual research evidence.
Summit’s marketing also leans heavily on the non-digital aspect of the program. “Your child’s education will be delivered via computer screen,” is not a winning sales pitch, and so Summit emphasizes other aspects. The “free” part is a big hit, particularly when linked to the success of the original Summit charter schools. This is a marketing approach unique to tech-based charters—”You can’t send your child to Super Tech Charter High, but now we can offer you practically almost kind of the same sort of experience in a software package.” This ignores the importance of local school culture, a factor that as yet cannot be loaded into software.
NEPC finds one other major concern with Summit’s digital program. Anything managed digitally can be collected digitally. Summit promises to collect and analyze a great deal of data in order to “personalize” the student’s experience, but that means that the program collects a great deal of personal data, and CZI has access to that data in perpetuity. As NEPC observes, “It is important to note that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) is not a charity or a philanthropic organization; it is a business.” It’s probably also worth noting that old internet wisdom, “If you aren’t paying for it, you’re the product being sold.”
Computer software often carries the illusion of objectivity, but as NEPC correctly points out, software is written by humans, and any algorithms carry the stamp, the biases, the ideology of the people writing them. Exposing a student to a program like Summit’s is like sending them to a school where they never meet the teachers and families are never allowed to know who designed the education program or the principles that guided them.
NEPC’s conclusion is direct:
Our analysis suggests that, rhetoric notwithstanding, the Summit Learning Program does not deliver on its promise to provide a higher quality education, with superior student outcomes, in the schools that adopt it. Moreover, aside from any valid education purpose, the Summit Learning Platform approach to assessment, coupled with enabling contract language, opens the door to the transfer of large amounts of student data to third parties without oversight or accountability.
A well-marketed nothingburger. All hat, no cowboy. All sizzle, no steak. Choose your favorite metaphor; this NEPC report suggests you should not support Summit’s digital education program.
Shortly after the report came out, Summit (which had previously been just somehow unable to really respond to NEPC) put up a blog post as rebuttal to the report. NEPC replied to that reply, and without getting into the nuts and bolts (you can find it all here if you wish), they rightly pointed out that Summit's reply was simply more of the same-- not transparent, and leaning on assertions rather than actual evidence.
Originally mostly posted at Forbes.com
Wednesday, July 15, 2020
A Rebecca Friedrichs Reader
Friedrichs has been in the news yet again, this time appearing on Fox to accuse America's Evil Teacher Unions of being sexual predators. It's an accusation that will have traction in some circles; if you spend any time in conspiratorial comment sections of the interwebz, you're probably aware of the grand conspiracy theory that says that the entire Democratic Party is a smokescreen for pedophiles trafficking in children.
If the Friedrichs name seems familiar, that's because she first burst into the news as the chirpy face of a lawsuit to legitimize freeloading in teachers unions and not coincidentally try to gut the unions financially. That suit ran into an unexpected death on the Supreme Court and the issue was eventually decided by Janus, but while the lawsuit failed, it launched a whole new career for Friedrichs.
So that's who that woman is. Rather than rehash previous pieces I've written about her, let me just provide you with the listings and you can decide on your own how much of this you can stomach.
Friedrichs At It Again (1/29/17)
All about the time she made one of those wacky Prager University videos, to educate Americans about the truth of evil unions.
What Ever Happened To Rebecca Friedrichs? (10/18/19)
Here's the basic outline of the lawsuit, the aftermath, and her post-lawsuit path into the land of Foxian anti-union noisemakers. If you're only going to read one of these, this is the one.
Social and Emotional Learning Is Drawing Fire (2/22/20)
If you were around in the 90's, you saw this one coming. Any school program that wants to teach values is going to draw fire from a certain brand of conservative. In the 90's, it was Outcome Based Education vs. Phyllis Schafly, among others. Right now, it's SEL vs. Rebecca Friedrichs and another batch of teachers she wants to boost.
Rebecca Friedrichs Still Hates The Teachers Union (6/18/20)
Just this summer she was going after Black Lives Matter by attaching it to the union plot to use Leftiness to Destroy America. This is the one where she claims that liberals are guilty of "forcing a chip onto the shoulders of black Americans." Also, the 1619 project is evil, too.
San Diego Vs. The Evil Union (6/25/20)
The group Friedrichs formed also pushes the story of other teachers who have tragically suffered from Evil Union activities. In June, a piece about how "unions killed creativity" at a charter school in San Diego was suddenly all over the web. It might not have told the whole story.
There was a time when one could make a case that Friedrichs was just a teacher who had a sincere difference of opinion with the union about fair share (it's not unheard of). But that ship has long since sailed, as she has revealed herself to be the kind of virulent political anti-unionist who would feel perfectly at home on Laura Ingraham's show.
So that's who that woman is. Rather than rehash previous pieces I've written about her, let me just provide you with the listings and you can decide on your own how much of this you can stomach.
Friedrichs At It Again (1/29/17)
All about the time she made one of those wacky Prager University videos, to educate Americans about the truth of evil unions.
What Ever Happened To Rebecca Friedrichs? (10/18/19)
Here's the basic outline of the lawsuit, the aftermath, and her post-lawsuit path into the land of Foxian anti-union noisemakers. If you're only going to read one of these, this is the one.
Social and Emotional Learning Is Drawing Fire (2/22/20)
If you were around in the 90's, you saw this one coming. Any school program that wants to teach values is going to draw fire from a certain brand of conservative. In the 90's, it was Outcome Based Education vs. Phyllis Schafly, among others. Right now, it's SEL vs. Rebecca Friedrichs and another batch of teachers she wants to boost.
Rebecca Friedrichs Still Hates The Teachers Union (6/18/20)
Just this summer she was going after Black Lives Matter by attaching it to the union plot to use Leftiness to Destroy America. This is the one where she claims that liberals are guilty of "forcing a chip onto the shoulders of black Americans." Also, the 1619 project is evil, too.
San Diego Vs. The Evil Union (6/25/20)
The group Friedrichs formed also pushes the story of other teachers who have tragically suffered from Evil Union activities. In June, a piece about how "unions killed creativity" at a charter school in San Diego was suddenly all over the web. It might not have told the whole story.
There was a time when one could make a case that Friedrichs was just a teacher who had a sincere difference of opinion with the union about fair share (it's not unheard of). But that ship has long since sailed, as she has revealed herself to be the kind of virulent political anti-unionist who would feel perfectly at home on Laura Ingraham's show.
Tuesday, July 14, 2020
The Test Many School Districts Failed Before The Pandemic Even Started
You’ve heard about an emotional bank account, a metaphor for the investments in personal relationships that keep them healthy and able to deal with the bumps and bruises that come along in any relationship. Build trust and deposit in the account in good times, make withdrawals in the lean times, and maintain a healthy balance. Organizations such as school districts have similar accounts, and 2020 is turning out to be the year some districts are finding out just how deep—or shallow—their reserves are.
Many districts are used to getting plenty of work from teachers without paying for it, either financially or emotionally. Teachers routinely work beyond their contracted hours, spend their own money on supplies, and fulfill many duties beyond simply instructing their students; all of this is part of the gig. Good teachers make regular deposits in the bank accounts of their district and their students. But district administrations have a wide variety of reactions.
Some districts are led by people who are appreciative and supportive, who look after their teachers and maintain conditions that help staff do their best work. These district leaders treat staff like valued, professional teammates. They build trust. They make regular deposits to the bank account.
Other districts are not so well led. Too may districts are bossed by people who consider the teaching staff adversaries, not to be trusted. For a while my own district was led by people who believed that if a teacher wasn’t in a classroom standing in front of students, she was wasting time (and the district’s money). The worst of these kinds of leaders manage with an inflexible fist, haunted by the fear that any concession or flexibility extended to staff somehow means that the administration is being taken advantage of. They treat staff like peons. They make no deposits into the bank account.
Making deposits in the account doesn’t require that administrators grovel before teachers and kiss their feet. Nor does it help to offer empty un-meant attaboys. Respect, trust and collaboration on a daily basis will do far more than hollow exercises that somebody learned at a management camp.
School systems are in many ways very different from businesses in the private sector, but in this managerial respect, they are much the same. When management fills the bank account, the organization runs more smoothly; when management drains the account, the problems may not be obvious because teachers, like other professionals, will put on their big girl pants and do the work. But when the account is empty, there’s nothing there to back calls to go an extra mile, let alone reserves for a rainy day. And now the Corvid-19 pandemic has provided the rainiest day schools have ever seen.
Going into the fall, money will be tight and needs will be great and teachers will be asked to make sacrifices of one sort of another. School districts must be clever and creative and flexible and adaptable. Districts that have cultivated an atmosphere of trust and teamwork with their staffs will be far more flexible and adaptable than those that have drained their accounts dry. As with any organization, years of quietly mediocre management become a big problem when they meet a large crisis. It’s difficult to get people to take one for the team today if you have spent years demonstrating to them that they are not actually members of the team. In a year that presents schools with unprecedented obstacles, it turns out that some schools are facing an obstacle that’s not new at all—the detritus of years of poor management. They’ve been taking this test of leadership for years; now they have to deal with the results.
Originally posted at Forbes.com
Some districts are led by people who are appreciative and supportive, who look after their teachers and maintain conditions that help staff do their best work. These district leaders treat staff like valued, professional teammates. They build trust. They make regular deposits to the bank account.
Other districts are not so well led. Too may districts are bossed by people who consider the teaching staff adversaries, not to be trusted. For a while my own district was led by people who believed that if a teacher wasn’t in a classroom standing in front of students, she was wasting time (and the district’s money). The worst of these kinds of leaders manage with an inflexible fist, haunted by the fear that any concession or flexibility extended to staff somehow means that the administration is being taken advantage of. They treat staff like peons. They make no deposits into the bank account.
Making deposits in the account doesn’t require that administrators grovel before teachers and kiss their feet. Nor does it help to offer empty un-meant attaboys. Respect, trust and collaboration on a daily basis will do far more than hollow exercises that somebody learned at a management camp.
School systems are in many ways very different from businesses in the private sector, but in this managerial respect, they are much the same. When management fills the bank account, the organization runs more smoothly; when management drains the account, the problems may not be obvious because teachers, like other professionals, will put on their big girl pants and do the work. But when the account is empty, there’s nothing there to back calls to go an extra mile, let alone reserves for a rainy day. And now the Corvid-19 pandemic has provided the rainiest day schools have ever seen.
Going into the fall, money will be tight and needs will be great and teachers will be asked to make sacrifices of one sort of another. School districts must be clever and creative and flexible and adaptable. Districts that have cultivated an atmosphere of trust and teamwork with their staffs will be far more flexible and adaptable than those that have drained their accounts dry. As with any organization, years of quietly mediocre management become a big problem when they meet a large crisis. It’s difficult to get people to take one for the team today if you have spent years demonstrating to them that they are not actually members of the team. In a year that presents schools with unprecedented obstacles, it turns out that some schools are facing an obstacle that’s not new at all—the detritus of years of poor management. They’ve been taking this test of leadership for years; now they have to deal with the results.
Originally posted at Forbes.com
Monday, July 13, 2020
NBA Includes Education Reform On Approved Social Justice Message List
So, the NBA and NBPA have created a list of approved social justice messages that players may put on the backs of their jerseys. Which is, I guess, a way to let players protest within a carefully delineated parameter, an official approved expression of disapproval. And the slogan will go in place of the player's name. But at least the NBA is doing something positive-ish, which is more than certain other sports ball leagues can claim.
Not everyone is up for it. LeBron James is among the few who isn't going to make a choice from the list hammered out by the owners and the players association. Anthony Davis is another.
Apparently "equality" is turning out to be the early favorite, but here's a list of the 29 officially okayed items:
Black Lives Matter; Say Their Names; Vote; I Can't Breathe; Justice; Peace; Equality; Freedom; Enough; Power to the People; Justice Now; Say Her Name; SÃ Se Puede (Yes We Can); Liberation; See Us; Hear Us; Respect Us; Love Us; Listen; Listen to Us; Stand Up; Ally; Anti-Racist; I Am A Man; Speak Up; How Many More; Group Economics; Education Reform; and Mentor.
Emphasis mine, because yes, there's "education reform" on the list. It's not entirely clear what that means at this point, since much of what we used to call "reform" is now the education status quo (e.g. high stakes testing, some degraded version of "college and career ready" standards). So there's Education Reform, which is what we've been suffering under for a couple of decades, and there's education reform, which is the desire to get education out from under all the Education Reform we've been suffering under for a couple of decades.
But at least one player has reportedly adopted the slogan for his jersey--Boston Celtics forward Gordon Hayward. No idea why.
 |
| That's Hayward |
Apparently "equality" is turning out to be the early favorite, but here's a list of the 29 officially okayed items:
Black Lives Matter; Say Their Names; Vote; I Can't Breathe; Justice; Peace; Equality; Freedom; Enough; Power to the People; Justice Now; Say Her Name; SÃ Se Puede (Yes We Can); Liberation; See Us; Hear Us; Respect Us; Love Us; Listen; Listen to Us; Stand Up; Ally; Anti-Racist; I Am A Man; Speak Up; How Many More; Group Economics; Education Reform; and Mentor.
Emphasis mine, because yes, there's "education reform" on the list. It's not entirely clear what that means at this point, since much of what we used to call "reform" is now the education status quo (e.g. high stakes testing, some degraded version of "college and career ready" standards). So there's Education Reform, which is what we've been suffering under for a couple of decades, and there's education reform, which is the desire to get education out from under all the Education Reform we've been suffering under for a couple of decades.
But at least one player has reportedly adopted the slogan for his jersey--Boston Celtics forward Gordon Hayward. No idea why.
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