Teachers get back to it this week, with students returning in a week. We're holding our breaths here-- my county has a 2020 total of 69 cases and 1 death (yes, that's for the whole year so far), so local folks have not been feeling the whole pandemic as much as they've been feeling the various shutdowns. So we'll see what happens. In the meantime, here's some stuff to read from the week.
Biden, Harris, and Dr. Biden Will Send DeVos Yachting!
Come for Nancy bailey's headline, and stay for the comprehensive list of DeVosian misbehavior.
Pod Save Us: How Learning Pods are Going to Destroy Public Education. Or Not.
Nancy Flanagan takes a look at pods without hyperventilating. A good look at this current phenom.
Charles Koch Buys Into National Parents Union
Maurice Cunningham has been tracking the NPU since they first tossed their heavily astroturfed hat into the education ring. Here's the latest fun new development.
The Problems with "Show Me the Research" in Teaching Reading
Paul Thomas has been a strong, thoughtful voice in the reading wars. Here's another clear explanation of why you don't need to feel steamrolled by the Science of Reading crowd.
NC Awards Grant to Charter Schools to Increase Access
For some reason, the state has decided it needs to bribe charter schools in order to get them to do the job that public education is supposed to do by accepting all students.
Cami Anderson: ‘Police-Free Schools’ Vs. ‘Chaos’ Is a False Choice. Here’s What Districts Must Do to Implement Real Discipline Reform
Reformy Cami Anderson in the reformy the74 actually has some thoughtful ideas here about how to get police out of school and, better yet, how to reframe the debate. I'm not agreeing with all of it, and yes, she's here to plug her newest edu-business, but this is still a good conversation starter.
How white progressives undermine school integration
Eliza Shapiro at the New York Times looks at some research and hosts a panel discussion about why places like New York City can talk the talk, but adamantly refuse to walk the walk.
British Grading Debacle Shows Pitfalls of Automating Government
Also in the NYT. Britain tried some computerized grading of students. It hasn't gone well.
The Woeful Inadequacy of School Reopening Plans
Amy Davidson Sorkin says we've pretty much wasted the summer. A not-very-uplifting read from the New Yorker.
What if the NBA ran the Department of Education?
McSweeney's, but not entirely a joke.
Sunday, August 23, 2020
Saturday, August 22, 2020
Grammar Police, Go Home
Grammar and usage are two different things, and understanding the difference can be a huge help in untying some linguistic knots and navigating some linguistic swamps of the English kind. Because the "grammar police" are almost never policing grammar; they're enforcing something else entirely. And yes-- if you stick around for this, you'll get some of the same stuff my students did for years.
Grammar
Grammar is the mechanics of language. Or at least, the best model we can come up with. Because here's the thing-- we don't really know how the brain does language. We know that there's a readiness factor (that would be why you learn your first language when you can't even dress yourself, but trying to learn a second language in your teens is twelve kinds of torture). Language is a big black box in the brain, and we don't know what's going on inside it.
But we can reverse engineer it. If you played Pacman, you learned a bunch of rules to the game--which way to turn, when to turn, where to pause, etc. You did not learn those by printing out and studying the program for the game. You learn by carefully observing what works and what doesn't. There are plenty of other examples-- we don't actually know how/why gravity works, but we can accurately describe how it will behave.
So to for grammar. Grammar rules are descriptive, like Newton's Laws of Motion. When we say that every sentence must contain a subject and a verb, that's not because somebody decided it would be a good idea, but because we can observe that when a sentence lacks either a subject or a verb, it doesn't work. Traditional grammar, like Newtonian physics, mostly describes things pretty well, but has some real holes in it. There are other grammars out there, but none have ever really caught on.
Grammar is all about the mechanics of how language works, what it parts are, how they function. Traditional grammar is pretty mechanical and not too pre-occupied with meaning (which is a problem that kind of seeps into language instruction in general from there, but let's save that topic for another day).
Mostly, when you break grammar rules, people look at you funny because you don't make sense. Sometimes, they look surprised because you make sense in new and interesting ways (lookin' at you, Will Shakespeare).
But the people you meet online who are called "grammar police"? They aren't really grammar police at all.
Usage
They're usage police.
Usage is about the "right" way to say something. It's what word is the "proper" word to use. It's what people judge you for, what they want to correct, what let's the words "right" and "wrong" into the conversation. All its rules are prescriptive, like a school dress code.
Usage is fashion for language. And like fashion, it doesn't always make sense (at this point, I would always point out to my students that we could all tell I was the most dressed up person in the room, because in the morning I took a special piece of fabric and tied it around my neck in a special way, and why is that even a thing, and by the way, think about the phrase "dressed up"). And like fashion, it is set in ways that are a little bit beyond human control.
For instance. Lots of languages have plural forms of "you." English did, too, once upon a time, but then we just sort of dropped it, but because it was useful, we eventually kind of put it back-- y'all, you guys, or, in my neck of the woods, y'uns.
For instance. Look at the enormous amount of effort it's taking to sell the replacement of "he" or "she" with "they." "They" offers a real solution to a real problem--the old rule that "he" was always the default when you had a singular person of unknown identity--but it's really hard to get language to change just because you want it to.
Usage is also the part of language where we start talking about meaning, both text and subtext.
That difference
So grammar is the attempt to describe what's happening in a part of our brains we cannot see or control. Usage is a social behavior, a linguistic fashion that responds to a variety of factors.
Classic example-- "ain't." "Ain't" is perfectly grammatical. Native speakers understand it, and they can recognize when it's used in a way that makes sense (That ain't it) and when it's not (Do you like my ain't hat). But ain't runs afoul of usage rules; it's not widely accepted as "proper" English, by which we mean--and here's an important part--the English used by people who have social status.
Another big difference is that usage changes, and grammar mostly doesn't. A sentence has required a subject and a verb for centuries. But like fashion, usage shifts. Sometimes we shift to something less formal (just like all the politicians who now campaign without a tie), and we are constantly experiencing usage "fads," where words or phrases erupt, spread, subside.
That shifting matters extra to English.
The trouble with English
Our language suffers from history. Specifically, the history of Britain, specifically their unfortunate tendency to be invaded a lot.
It's fair, because the language starts with an invasion. Those Anglo-Saxons attack and take over the island nation, and at this point, we tag the start of Old English (Angle-ish), a language that a modern English speaker can't understand. Then along come the Danes, and the big language-buster, the Norman Conquest. After the conquest, most of England's upper class speak French-ish, and Anglo-Saxon is spoken mostly by the vulgar lower classes. It's a social fashion that affects us to this day (or did you think there was some good reason that "shit" is a naughty word but "defecate" is all sciency and smart). And then of course the language gets spread to the US, where we are just melting people into the pot right and left. End result is that while some languages tend to be kind of stiff and set in their ways, English is flexy and bendy.
When usage started to be codified, folks mostly just codified the same social status and fashion that had always been at the heart of it. Who says this "correctly"? Must be the rich upper-crust folks of London, and not those poor hicks from the hinterlands.
This process has never stopped, and it has never, ever been divorced from class and status. Have we grown a bunch of different languages? Probably not-- there's plenty of academic argument about this sort of thing, but the short layperson answer is that if someone is talking to you and you understand them, then the two of you speak the same language. But we're loaded with dialects and accents and versions of English, and there is absolutely no objective method for determining which is "better," just like there's no objective method for determining which pair of pants is "best."
"Correct" usage is always a social construct, and context always matters.
Deliberate language change is hard
Is correct English a white thing? Sure. Also a classist thing. And knowing that is important. But changing it is tough. When you see a demanding statement like this NCTE group demanding linguistic justice, it's hard to imagine how to make it work.
For one thing, they question if white students are asked to code-switch and drop their native usage patterns, and as someone who taught many low-income white kids, the answer is yes. Shaking the language you grow up with is hard; your tribe tends to push out other usage patterns. A country boy from my region may be looked down on if he walks into a swanky country club in the Hamptons, but if those folks walk into an auto parts store in my town, they may well get the same treatment.
For another thing, making deliberate usage rule changes is as hard as making a particular fashion trend happen on purpose, or getting a video to go viral. Hell, it's so difficult that some of us made entire careers that were at least partly about trying to coach those transformations.
You can wear a floofy purple hat in public every day to try to make floofy purple hats happen, but at some point, you may decide that it will help you achieve some of your goals to leave the hat at home. The argument about non-standard English has raged forever--on one side is "It's insulting and oppressive to tell my child she speaks incorrectly" and on the other side "I expect you to give my child the tools she needs to have mobility and achieve her goals."
It is possible to do both. And what we can most definitely do is understand that usage rules are not sent down from the Mount on stone tablets. They are not inviolate and they are not a solid means to judging someone's intellect, value or ability. And for gatekeepers like teachers and professors, there is always a need to look in the mirror and ask, "Am I just putting a lot of weight on mechanics and usage because grading content and expression is wiggly and hard?" Because you can definitely stop that.
In the meantime, it's fair to respond to grammar police with statements like "On whose authority do you believe that's correct." If they actually call themselves grammar police, you ask them to explain what they think grammar is and where it comes from. And you can always just say, "I ain't got time for that shit." Which is totally grammatically correct.
Grammar
Grammar is the mechanics of language. Or at least, the best model we can come up with. Because here's the thing-- we don't really know how the brain does language. We know that there's a readiness factor (that would be why you learn your first language when you can't even dress yourself, but trying to learn a second language in your teens is twelve kinds of torture). Language is a big black box in the brain, and we don't know what's going on inside it.
But we can reverse engineer it. If you played Pacman, you learned a bunch of rules to the game--which way to turn, when to turn, where to pause, etc. You did not learn those by printing out and studying the program for the game. You learn by carefully observing what works and what doesn't. There are plenty of other examples-- we don't actually know how/why gravity works, but we can accurately describe how it will behave.
So to for grammar. Grammar rules are descriptive, like Newton's Laws of Motion. When we say that every sentence must contain a subject and a verb, that's not because somebody decided it would be a good idea, but because we can observe that when a sentence lacks either a subject or a verb, it doesn't work. Traditional grammar, like Newtonian physics, mostly describes things pretty well, but has some real holes in it. There are other grammars out there, but none have ever really caught on.
Grammar is all about the mechanics of how language works, what it parts are, how they function. Traditional grammar is pretty mechanical and not too pre-occupied with meaning (which is a problem that kind of seeps into language instruction in general from there, but let's save that topic for another day).
Mostly, when you break grammar rules, people look at you funny because you don't make sense. Sometimes, they look surprised because you make sense in new and interesting ways (lookin' at you, Will Shakespeare).
But the people you meet online who are called "grammar police"? They aren't really grammar police at all.
Usage
They're usage police.
Usage is about the "right" way to say something. It's what word is the "proper" word to use. It's what people judge you for, what they want to correct, what let's the words "right" and "wrong" into the conversation. All its rules are prescriptive, like a school dress code.
Usage is fashion for language. And like fashion, it doesn't always make sense (at this point, I would always point out to my students that we could all tell I was the most dressed up person in the room, because in the morning I took a special piece of fabric and tied it around my neck in a special way, and why is that even a thing, and by the way, think about the phrase "dressed up"). And like fashion, it is set in ways that are a little bit beyond human control.
For instance. Lots of languages have plural forms of "you." English did, too, once upon a time, but then we just sort of dropped it, but because it was useful, we eventually kind of put it back-- y'all, you guys, or, in my neck of the woods, y'uns.
For instance. Look at the enormous amount of effort it's taking to sell the replacement of "he" or "she" with "they." "They" offers a real solution to a real problem--the old rule that "he" was always the default when you had a singular person of unknown identity--but it's really hard to get language to change just because you want it to.
Usage is also the part of language where we start talking about meaning, both text and subtext.
That difference
So grammar is the attempt to describe what's happening in a part of our brains we cannot see or control. Usage is a social behavior, a linguistic fashion that responds to a variety of factors.
Classic example-- "ain't." "Ain't" is perfectly grammatical. Native speakers understand it, and they can recognize when it's used in a way that makes sense (That ain't it) and when it's not (Do you like my ain't hat). But ain't runs afoul of usage rules; it's not widely accepted as "proper" English, by which we mean--and here's an important part--the English used by people who have social status.
Another big difference is that usage changes, and grammar mostly doesn't. A sentence has required a subject and a verb for centuries. But like fashion, usage shifts. Sometimes we shift to something less formal (just like all the politicians who now campaign without a tie), and we are constantly experiencing usage "fads," where words or phrases erupt, spread, subside.
That shifting matters extra to English.
The trouble with English
Our language suffers from history. Specifically, the history of Britain, specifically their unfortunate tendency to be invaded a lot.
It's fair, because the language starts with an invasion. Those Anglo-Saxons attack and take over the island nation, and at this point, we tag the start of Old English (Angle-ish), a language that a modern English speaker can't understand. Then along come the Danes, and the big language-buster, the Norman Conquest. After the conquest, most of England's upper class speak French-ish, and Anglo-Saxon is spoken mostly by the vulgar lower classes. It's a social fashion that affects us to this day (or did you think there was some good reason that "shit" is a naughty word but "defecate" is all sciency and smart). And then of course the language gets spread to the US, where we are just melting people into the pot right and left. End result is that while some languages tend to be kind of stiff and set in their ways, English is flexy and bendy.
When usage started to be codified, folks mostly just codified the same social status and fashion that had always been at the heart of it. Who says this "correctly"? Must be the rich upper-crust folks of London, and not those poor hicks from the hinterlands.
This process has never stopped, and it has never, ever been divorced from class and status. Have we grown a bunch of different languages? Probably not-- there's plenty of academic argument about this sort of thing, but the short layperson answer is that if someone is talking to you and you understand them, then the two of you speak the same language. But we're loaded with dialects and accents and versions of English, and there is absolutely no objective method for determining which is "better," just like there's no objective method for determining which pair of pants is "best."
"Correct" usage is always a social construct, and context always matters.
Deliberate language change is hard
Is correct English a white thing? Sure. Also a classist thing. And knowing that is important. But changing it is tough. When you see a demanding statement like this NCTE group demanding linguistic justice, it's hard to imagine how to make it work.
For one thing, they question if white students are asked to code-switch and drop their native usage patterns, and as someone who taught many low-income white kids, the answer is yes. Shaking the language you grow up with is hard; your tribe tends to push out other usage patterns. A country boy from my region may be looked down on if he walks into a swanky country club in the Hamptons, but if those folks walk into an auto parts store in my town, they may well get the same treatment.
For another thing, making deliberate usage rule changes is as hard as making a particular fashion trend happen on purpose, or getting a video to go viral. Hell, it's so difficult that some of us made entire careers that were at least partly about trying to coach those transformations.
You can wear a floofy purple hat in public every day to try to make floofy purple hats happen, but at some point, you may decide that it will help you achieve some of your goals to leave the hat at home. The argument about non-standard English has raged forever--on one side is "It's insulting and oppressive to tell my child she speaks incorrectly" and on the other side "I expect you to give my child the tools she needs to have mobility and achieve her goals."
It is possible to do both. And what we can most definitely do is understand that usage rules are not sent down from the Mount on stone tablets. They are not inviolate and they are not a solid means to judging someone's intellect, value or ability. And for gatekeepers like teachers and professors, there is always a need to look in the mirror and ask, "Am I just putting a lot of weight on mechanics and usage because grading content and expression is wiggly and hard?" Because you can definitely stop that.
In the meantime, it's fair to respond to grammar police with statements like "On whose authority do you believe that's correct." If they actually call themselves grammar police, you ask them to explain what they think grammar is and where it comes from. And you can always just say, "I ain't got time for that shit." Which is totally grammatically correct.
Friday, August 21, 2020
"Essential" My Aunt Fanny
At this point, the adjective "Orwellian" has been absolutely beaten to death (with "Kafkaesque" right behind it). But this latest Orwellian bullshit just pokes my last nerve with a sharp stick.
You would think that an "essential" worker would be the one that you want to take the greatest steps to protect and preserve. That person guarding the door while a fire-laced sharknado rages outside? They're absolutely essential, and we'd better make sure they gets whatever they need.
But under pandemic pretzel logic, that "essential" person is the first one who gets thrown out the door.
During the pandemess, "essential" has two important meanings. First, it means that those workers can't refuse to work just because they are, you know, worried about their lives or health. Second, it means that nobody in charge can be held accountable for anything bad that happens to them while they're on the front lines.
When Trump declared meat packers "essential," that wasn't a recognition and reward for their important contribution to society. It was a declaration that Grampa wants his steak and he doesn't want to hear damned excuses, whether you're a worker (I'd rather not get sick and/or die) or a boss (I'd rather not get sued for forcing people into unsafe conditions). There was no "We're going to invest in the resources necessary to protect you while you're out there." Just "get back to work."
In fact, a quick scan of "essential" workers reveals a list of the same folks who are regularly told they should happily work under lousy conditions for low pay.
It has been a stark, ugly look at how our society devalues humans. The steak is valuable and important; the guy who butchers it, not so much. Amazon is essential, but not the workers who make it actually function. Meat widgets are a dime a dozen, but the consumer class does not want to spend another dime on another twelve-pack.
So of course it makes perfect sense that Trump would today declare that teachers are officially "essential."
It sounds like a compliment. It's not, and the tell is that none of these "essential" folks have ever been nor will ever be called essential in any other context. This is not "essential" as in "This work is so important we'd better look at how to offer greater compensation" or "These folks are so essential that we'd better muster all the resources we can beg, borrow or steal to make sure they're as protected as possible" or even "These people are so essential that we'd better ask them what they need and give them whatever they ask for."
Pence wants you to know that his wife is going to back to teach at the tiny exclusive private school where she works. The White House press secretary wants you to know that there's some money and magical guidelines and teachers are just like meat packers. And yes, everyone--well, almost everyone--is wrestling with lots of hard stuff, and many people are working under crappy, scary conditions. Lots of folks are paying some hard dues.
The administration desperately needs to get the economy back to normal, but nobody is going to admit that child care and K-12 education is an essential part of the economy's infrastructure, as surely as roads and telecommunications, because then we'd have to craft policy that reflected that reality.
Are teachers essential? Absolutely. That's why people making school re-opening plans should be listening to them. That's why they should be well paid, and supported, and given the kinds of protections that make sense in light of whatever the local picture might be. And on top of all that, one other thing--
Respect.
"Pandemic essential" seems to be the opposite of that. Not "Mad props for the important work you do" as much as "Shut up and get back in there, because it's inconvenient for me to have you not on the job." Place your bets now on whether the powers that will be are going to let the "essential" designation quietly lapse, or if someone will stand up some post-pandemic day to announce to meat cutters, nurses and teachers that they are not "essential" any more. What a bittersweet day that will be.
You would think that an "essential" worker would be the one that you want to take the greatest steps to protect and preserve. That person guarding the door while a fire-laced sharknado rages outside? They're absolutely essential, and we'd better make sure they gets whatever they need.
But under pandemic pretzel logic, that "essential" person is the first one who gets thrown out the door.
When Trump declared meat packers "essential," that wasn't a recognition and reward for their important contribution to society. It was a declaration that Grampa wants his steak and he doesn't want to hear damned excuses, whether you're a worker (I'd rather not get sick and/or die) or a boss (I'd rather not get sued for forcing people into unsafe conditions). There was no "We're going to invest in the resources necessary to protect you while you're out there." Just "get back to work."
In fact, a quick scan of "essential" workers reveals a list of the same folks who are regularly told they should happily work under lousy conditions for low pay.
It has been a stark, ugly look at how our society devalues humans. The steak is valuable and important; the guy who butchers it, not so much. Amazon is essential, but not the workers who make it actually function. Meat widgets are a dime a dozen, but the consumer class does not want to spend another dime on another twelve-pack.
So of course it makes perfect sense that Trump would today declare that teachers are officially "essential."
It sounds like a compliment. It's not, and the tell is that none of these "essential" folks have ever been nor will ever be called essential in any other context. This is not "essential" as in "This work is so important we'd better look at how to offer greater compensation" or "These folks are so essential that we'd better muster all the resources we can beg, borrow or steal to make sure they're as protected as possible" or even "These people are so essential that we'd better ask them what they need and give them whatever they ask for."
Pence wants you to know that his wife is going to back to teach at the tiny exclusive private school where she works. The White House press secretary wants you to know that there's some money and magical guidelines and teachers are just like meat packers. And yes, everyone--well, almost everyone--is wrestling with lots of hard stuff, and many people are working under crappy, scary conditions. Lots of folks are paying some hard dues.
The administration desperately needs to get the economy back to normal, but nobody is going to admit that child care and K-12 education is an essential part of the economy's infrastructure, as surely as roads and telecommunications, because then we'd have to craft policy that reflected that reality.
Are teachers essential? Absolutely. That's why people making school re-opening plans should be listening to them. That's why they should be well paid, and supported, and given the kinds of protections that make sense in light of whatever the local picture might be. And on top of all that, one other thing--
Respect.
"Pandemic essential" seems to be the opposite of that. Not "Mad props for the important work you do" as much as "Shut up and get back in there, because it's inconvenient for me to have you not on the job." Place your bets now on whether the powers that will be are going to let the "essential" designation quietly lapse, or if someone will stand up some post-pandemic day to announce to meat cutters, nurses and teachers that they are not "essential" any more. What a bittersweet day that will be.
Wednesday, August 19, 2020
MI: Teacher Fired Over Political Tweet. If Only There Was A Way Protect Against Such Injustice.
Be careful what you wish for.
Conservative media made a small summer meal out of the story of Justin Kucera, a 28-year-old social studies teacher/coach at Walled Lake Western High School.
The known facts of the story appear to be this:
On July 6, Kucera retweeted the Trump classic, "SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL." He followed that with “I’m done being silent. @realDonaldTrump is our president … Don’t @ me” Further down the thread, he responded to someone with a "liberals suck, man." That tweet, which Kucera later characterized as a sort of light sarcasm, was later deleted, but the damage, apparently, was done.
The district superintendent offered a bit of a subtweet on July 7, including "We believe in the importance of discourse, but we will not stand for speech or actions from those that represent our District that seek to divide or demean our staff, students, citizens."
Kucera was pulled into a virtual meeting with his administrators, the HR department and his union reps on July 10. They asked him why he tweeted those particular messages, and ultimately gave him the choice of resigning or being fired in a July 15 meeting. He chose not to resign, and the district fired him.
The district has maintained that they did not fire Kucera for boosting Trump, but Kucera has presented his story to many outlets as "I was fired for supporting Trump." Many folks have poked around the tweeterverse to unearth other Walled Lake teachers who have been critical of Trump without repercussions. His termination letter cited "a lack of professional judgment."
The superintendent reached out to Kucera, and on July 22 they met. The personnel file obtained by the Detroit News says the superintendent was looking for ways "we may be able to save this relatively new teacher's career" and administer something less than termination. The file also notes that Kucera had a previous instance of "poor judgment." That incident apparently involved Kucera not showing up for class and not telling anyone back in October of 2019. The superintendent offered Kucera a path back to the classroom, but the next day, Kucera said no thanks, saying that the issue would follow him into the classroom. The file also included this piece of info from the superintendent:
When I asked him whether or not he knew that it was the Liberals Suck tweet and not the Trump is President tweet that was the issue, he admitted that he did.
Now, it's important to acknowledge that there may be more to the story. When people call out school districts in public, there are all sorts of confidentiality rules that keep districts from fully responding; it is entirely possible that there are other problems behind this firing.
But on the surface, this tale has been enough to throw conservatives across the country and GOP-ers in Michigan into a state of high dudgeon. Michigan GOP leader Laura Cox called it "incredibly disturbing" if true. There are even fundraising efforts (though not very successful ones). They've reacted to the surface version of this story, and that's where the lesson lies.
Because the Michigan GOP totally asked for this.
A decade ago, they were busily hacking away at public education through ever manner of attack they could devise. That included a package of laws that then-governor and never-a-friend-of-education Rick Snyder that cut teacher tenure off at the knees. For instance, the old job security laws (what we call "tenure" really isn't, but it's the term everyone's used to) required that a district had to show "reasonable and just cause" to fire a teacher with tenure; the new law just requires proof that the firing was not "arbitrary and capricious."
The new batch of laws also made tenure harder to get, and that's where Kucera's troubles seem to lie. A teacher is "on probation" for the first five years of their career, meaning they can be fired for pretty much any reason at all, including Pissing Off The Wrong People or Looking Like A Potential Source of Headaches for Administration.
When tenure battles were all the rage, teachers and their supporters said repeatedly that teachers need job protections so that they don't have to constantly looking over their shoulders and worrying about a hundred little things like political affiliation. "You big wimps are just afraid of accountability," was the reply.
Well, here we are. In too many states, teachers are vulnerable to firing just for artlessly expressing a political opinion--even if they happen to be opinions by the folks who argued that teachers wouldn't be fired just for expressing political opinions. And while conservative outlets large and small whinged about the unfairness of Kucera's firing, somehow not one that I read managed to connect the dots between this unjust firing and the gutting of laws to protect the due process of teachers and the kneecapping of their unions. I'm sorry for what happened to Justin Kucera--here's hoping that he realizes that it was not sucky liberals who are responsible.
Conservative media made a small summer meal out of the story of Justin Kucera, a 28-year-old social studies teacher/coach at Walled Lake Western High School.
The known facts of the story appear to be this:
On July 6, Kucera retweeted the Trump classic, "SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL." He followed that with “I’m done being silent. @realDonaldTrump is our president … Don’t @ me” Further down the thread, he responded to someone with a "liberals suck, man." That tweet, which Kucera later characterized as a sort of light sarcasm, was later deleted, but the damage, apparently, was done.
Kucera was pulled into a virtual meeting with his administrators, the HR department and his union reps on July 10. They asked him why he tweeted those particular messages, and ultimately gave him the choice of resigning or being fired in a July 15 meeting. He chose not to resign, and the district fired him.
The district has maintained that they did not fire Kucera for boosting Trump, but Kucera has presented his story to many outlets as "I was fired for supporting Trump." Many folks have poked around the tweeterverse to unearth other Walled Lake teachers who have been critical of Trump without repercussions. His termination letter cited "a lack of professional judgment."
The superintendent reached out to Kucera, and on July 22 they met. The personnel file obtained by the Detroit News says the superintendent was looking for ways "we may be able to save this relatively new teacher's career" and administer something less than termination. The file also notes that Kucera had a previous instance of "poor judgment." That incident apparently involved Kucera not showing up for class and not telling anyone back in October of 2019. The superintendent offered Kucera a path back to the classroom, but the next day, Kucera said no thanks, saying that the issue would follow him into the classroom. The file also included this piece of info from the superintendent:
When I asked him whether or not he knew that it was the Liberals Suck tweet and not the Trump is President tweet that was the issue, he admitted that he did.
Now, it's important to acknowledge that there may be more to the story. When people call out school districts in public, there are all sorts of confidentiality rules that keep districts from fully responding; it is entirely possible that there are other problems behind this firing.
But on the surface, this tale has been enough to throw conservatives across the country and GOP-ers in Michigan into a state of high dudgeon. Michigan GOP leader Laura Cox called it "incredibly disturbing" if true. There are even fundraising efforts (though not very successful ones). They've reacted to the surface version of this story, and that's where the lesson lies.
Because the Michigan GOP totally asked for this.
A decade ago, they were busily hacking away at public education through ever manner of attack they could devise. That included a package of laws that then-governor and never-a-friend-of-education Rick Snyder that cut teacher tenure off at the knees. For instance, the old job security laws (what we call "tenure" really isn't, but it's the term everyone's used to) required that a district had to show "reasonable and just cause" to fire a teacher with tenure; the new law just requires proof that the firing was not "arbitrary and capricious."
The new batch of laws also made tenure harder to get, and that's where Kucera's troubles seem to lie. A teacher is "on probation" for the first five years of their career, meaning they can be fired for pretty much any reason at all, including Pissing Off The Wrong People or Looking Like A Potential Source of Headaches for Administration.
When tenure battles were all the rage, teachers and their supporters said repeatedly that teachers need job protections so that they don't have to constantly looking over their shoulders and worrying about a hundred little things like political affiliation. "You big wimps are just afraid of accountability," was the reply.
Well, here we are. In too many states, teachers are vulnerable to firing just for artlessly expressing a political opinion--even if they happen to be opinions by the folks who argued that teachers wouldn't be fired just for expressing political opinions. And while conservative outlets large and small whinged about the unfairness of Kucera's firing, somehow not one that I read managed to connect the dots between this unjust firing and the gutting of laws to protect the due process of teachers and the kneecapping of their unions. I'm sorry for what happened to Justin Kucera--here's hoping that he realizes that it was not sucky liberals who are responsible.
Tuesday, August 18, 2020
For Teachers, This Is All Unfortunately Familiar
It didn’t have to be this way.
I’m not the first person to make that observation, and I won’t be the last. But it bears repeating. Because, for many regular citizens this school reopening-during-a-pandemic business may seem like a brand new adventure, but for educators, this is a new arrangement of a song they’ve heard many times before.
In some alternate universe, political leaders—top folks, like governors and even the President—sit down last winter, or even last spring, and have a long hard talk about schools in the midst of a pandemic.
I’m not the first person to make that observation, and I won’t be the last. But it bears repeating. Because, for many regular citizens this school reopening-during-a-pandemic business may seem like a brand new adventure, but for educators, this is a new arrangement of a song they’ve heard many times before.
In some alternate universe, political leaders—top folks, like governors and even the President—sit down last winter, or even last spring, and have a long hard talk about schools in the midst of a pandemic.
“Schools are critical,” someone declares. “The workers who keep the economy going need to be freed up to get back on the job. Beyond that, we cannot tolerate on our watch a generation of young people getting a small slice of the education to which they’re entitled.” A resolution is reached. “We will do,” the elected leaders declare,” whatever it takes, come through with whatever resources are needed. We will assemble a blue ribbon panel of scientists and teachers and they will figure out what is needed to get public education safely running again, and we will take their recommendations and make them real.”
In this alternate universe, the secretary of education is pushing and cajoling and shaming and bully pulpiting Congress to authorize the necessary resources. “Not only that,” says the secretary (and some other leaders), “but if we are going to ask public school teachers to be the front line troops in this critical battle, we are going to make damned sure they are taken care of.” Or perhaps in that universe leaders are declaring, “It can’t be done safely. We’d better repurpose billions of dollars for the training, technology and infrastructure needed to pivot US education to distance learning. It’ll be expensive and difficult, but at least it will keep people save and students educated.”
But that’s an alternate universe.
In this universe, it’s the same old same old. Some lofty rhetoric about how critical education is, how heroic teachers are. And that’s it. Thoughts and prayers and grousing about how we already spend way too much on public education. We’ve been here before.
We pass a national mandate requiring schools to provide a free and appropriate education for every student, no matter what obstacles that student may face—but Congress never actually funds the mandate.
We repeatedly “discover” that non-wealthy non-white communities are poorly served by schools that lack adequate resources, but somehow nobody ever musters the will to get those schools the resources they need.
We regular declare a “crisis” in the US’s “failing” schools, and every time teachers cringe because they know whose fault it’s going to turn out to be—teachers. Teachers should be smarter. Teachers should have higher expectations. Teachers are being protected by their evil unions.
School shootings increasingly alarm the public, who once again declare their admiration for heroic teachers. The federal government even puts together a task force, headed up by the secretary of education, to look at what can be done. Her recommendation for protecting students and teachers? Arm teachers.
When Congress does try to direct some relief funding for schools dealing with the pandemic, that same secretary of education does not fight for more support for schools, but instead looks for ways to use those funds to back her preferred non-public school causes. Meanwhile, the administration spent more to “rescue” a single airline than to prop up the entire child care sector.
Meanwhile, the administration’s official position seems to be that there is no problem, and if there is, somehow the local schools will handle it, somehow.
It is true that there are no good solutions for the reopening of schools in the fall. It is also true that there are no cheap, safe solutions for the reopening of schools this fall. But that is a little bit true every fall, and every year teachers are encouraged to get in there and do the best they can anyway.
This is the song every teachers knows. “You do great, important work—but we already spend way too much on you, so don’t expect any more help to appear.” (Of course, it’s not how much you spend, but how you spend it, but that’s another conversation we aren’t having.) And then the next chorus is, “You are such great heroes, and we sure admire your love for the kids—and if you really love them, you won’t demand any more from us.” To listen to the rhetoric, one would conclude that there is nothing more important to this country than educating our children; to watch the actions of politicians and bureaucrats, one would conclude that education is a small after thought and political football.
Reopening schools during a pandemic is new only in the degree of severity. For a teacher, it’s all too familiar. You’re changing the flat tire on a bus loaded with kids, in the rain, and they’re hungry. A big shiny Lexus pulls up next to you, and some politician or bureaucrat lowers the window and hollers, “Boy, that looks tough. I admire your hard work and dedication.” You ask if he could make a phone call for help, or get out and lend a hand, but he doesn’t seem to hear. “Well, hey, good luck to you,” he says, rolling up the window. “I’m sure you’ll make it all work out.”
It didn’t have to be this way. It still doesn’t. Educators would love to hear something other than that old familiar song. But they can’t wait; the flat tire won’t change itself.
In this alternate universe, the secretary of education is pushing and cajoling and shaming and bully pulpiting Congress to authorize the necessary resources. “Not only that,” says the secretary (and some other leaders), “but if we are going to ask public school teachers to be the front line troops in this critical battle, we are going to make damned sure they are taken care of.” Or perhaps in that universe leaders are declaring, “It can’t be done safely. We’d better repurpose billions of dollars for the training, technology and infrastructure needed to pivot US education to distance learning. It’ll be expensive and difficult, but at least it will keep people save and students educated.”
But that’s an alternate universe.
In this universe, it’s the same old same old. Some lofty rhetoric about how critical education is, how heroic teachers are. And that’s it. Thoughts and prayers and grousing about how we already spend way too much on public education. We’ve been here before.
We pass a national mandate requiring schools to provide a free and appropriate education for every student, no matter what obstacles that student may face—but Congress never actually funds the mandate.
We repeatedly “discover” that non-wealthy non-white communities are poorly served by schools that lack adequate resources, but somehow nobody ever musters the will to get those schools the resources they need.
We regular declare a “crisis” in the US’s “failing” schools, and every time teachers cringe because they know whose fault it’s going to turn out to be—teachers. Teachers should be smarter. Teachers should have higher expectations. Teachers are being protected by their evil unions.
School shootings increasingly alarm the public, who once again declare their admiration for heroic teachers. The federal government even puts together a task force, headed up by the secretary of education, to look at what can be done. Her recommendation for protecting students and teachers? Arm teachers.
When Congress does try to direct some relief funding for schools dealing with the pandemic, that same secretary of education does not fight for more support for schools, but instead looks for ways to use those funds to back her preferred non-public school causes. Meanwhile, the administration spent more to “rescue” a single airline than to prop up the entire child care sector.
Meanwhile, the administration’s official position seems to be that there is no problem, and if there is, somehow the local schools will handle it, somehow.
It is true that there are no good solutions for the reopening of schools in the fall. It is also true that there are no cheap, safe solutions for the reopening of schools this fall. But that is a little bit true every fall, and every year teachers are encouraged to get in there and do the best they can anyway.
This is the song every teachers knows. “You do great, important work—but we already spend way too much on you, so don’t expect any more help to appear.” (Of course, it’s not how much you spend, but how you spend it, but that’s another conversation we aren’t having.) And then the next chorus is, “You are such great heroes, and we sure admire your love for the kids—and if you really love them, you won’t demand any more from us.” To listen to the rhetoric, one would conclude that there is nothing more important to this country than educating our children; to watch the actions of politicians and bureaucrats, one would conclude that education is a small after thought and political football.
Reopening schools during a pandemic is new only in the degree of severity. For a teacher, it’s all too familiar. You’re changing the flat tire on a bus loaded with kids, in the rain, and they’re hungry. A big shiny Lexus pulls up next to you, and some politician or bureaucrat lowers the window and hollers, “Boy, that looks tough. I admire your hard work and dedication.” You ask if he could make a phone call for help, or get out and lend a hand, but he doesn’t seem to hear. “Well, hey, good luck to you,” he says, rolling up the window. “I’m sure you’ll make it all work out.”
It didn’t have to be this way. It still doesn’t. Educators would love to hear something other than that old familiar song. But they can’t wait; the flat tire won’t change itself.
Monday, August 17, 2020
Silicon Valley and the Surveillance State
Peter Schwartz is an American futurist, innovator, author, and co-founder of the Global Business Network, a corporate strategy firm. He's done sexy things like consult for futury movies, including WarGames (ew), Minority Report, and Sneakers (an under-appreciated gem). He's written an assortment of books; he also wrote the 2004 climate change report that predicted that England would be a frozen wasteland by, well, right now. (This Peter Schwartz should not be confused with this Peter Schwartz, Ayn Rand-loving writer. )
Schwartz was the subject of an interview in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle, reminding us that there's an entire sector of future-looking tech-loving folks who think the advent of the surveillance state is pretty swell.
Schwartz is not in Silicon Valley-- he's a Beverly Hills guy. And not everything he says is alarming. For instance:
Every single time, with no exceptions, that I’ve gotten the future wrong, it’s because there was an inadequate diversity of people in the room. It was not that it couldn’t be seen; it was that we were just talking to ourselves.
Technocrats desperately need to hear that, but the prevailing ethos is the idea of a single visionary CEO without other voices to hold him back. As in Zuckerberg's unwillingness to let go of control of his company or his money, or Reed Hastings' belief that school boards should be scrapped because they just get in the Visionary Leader's way.
But then the interviewer asks how our feelings about surveillance are "evolving," and, well, Schwartz doesn't dig very deep.
There will be times when it’s abused, when data is stolen, when people are harmed by it. But for 99% of the people, 99% of the time, it will mean that you didn’t have to show your ticket to get on BART; it means you didn’t have to check out at the supermarket; it means that when somebody stole your kid’s bike, it will have been seen. Oh, and that unhealthy people will be detected before I get on the airplane.
There's no question that folks hav e shown that they are more than willing to fork over huge amounts of personal data for a smidgen of convenience. Hell, people still insist on giving away tons of data just so they can take a "Which kind of exotic cheese are you" quiz on Facebook. But look at how quickly he skips past the down side, and characterizes it as the occasional bad actor, and not a dystopic system of surveillance and control. But here we arrive at an article of misplaced faith.
We’re now in a global village where the truth is everything can be known about everybody.
The truth is that we can collect a great deal of data and factoids about anyone, but that's not everything. This is like believing that if you know your spouse's height, weight, shoe size, favorite color, previous addresses, well, you know everything you can (or need to) know. This is exactly like believing that if you have collected a bunch of standardized test scores from a student, you know that student.
If we could just collect all the observable, quantifiable data, we would know everything about everything. So let us collect it all. Because it's going to happen anyway.
That's the Silicon Valley ethic, and it's wrong on several levels.
First, collecting all the data doesn't make one all-knowing. I'm not just talking about the whole "difference between knowledge and wisdom" thing, or pointing at romantic odes to human complexity and depth (though those things are true, too). Read up on Information Theory and Chaos science-- complex systems define specific, linear predictability. It doesn't matter how many facts you collect--you still can't predict exactly what comes next.
Second, get your paws off our data. Better yet, if you want it, pay for it. If we're imagining our favorite futures, I'd like to imagine one in which customers don't pay for the privilege of being data mined. It's not just that data mining is invasive and obnoxious--the current practitioners are still really bad at it. Feeding that bad data into systems yields bad results.
Third, it's not inevitable. Tech folks--especially ed tech folks--invariably present sales pitches in the guise of future predictions. They are wrong, a lot, in part because they are the techno version of the used car salesman saying, "I can just see you driving this baby out of here." No. You hope to see that, but right now, it's just a sales pitch.
The surveillance state won't be a happy utopia occasionally interrupted by the blip of isolated bad actors. The big use of data is to help mold and direct the behavior of the masses, and the two big motivators for that kind of nudging are 1) the desire to make money and 2) te desire to acquire political power, and we've already seen both in action.
The surveillance state will continue to come after schools, because how else do you gather All The Data except by starting early? Schools are easily seduced partners because too often some folks in charge (and some, sadly, in the classroom) are attracted to the idea that they could get so much more done if they had more data, more control (this is true for public, charter, and private schools). One of the decisions that educational institutions must make, late as it is in the game, is whether they want to help the data miners or become protectors of student data.
They should be protectors. When buying a program, they should require that everything collected will stay within the district's system, to be easily scrubbed when the students leave or graduate. When subscribing to an online service, they should demand ironclad assurances that student data will not be shared (not even with "trusted partners") or kept after the student graduates. Schools are where the foundation of the surveillance state will be laid; schools should be actively and deliberately making sure that foundation doesn't get built.
Schwartz was the subject of an interview in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle, reminding us that there's an entire sector of future-looking tech-loving folks who think the advent of the surveillance state is pretty swell.
Schwartz is not in Silicon Valley-- he's a Beverly Hills guy. And not everything he says is alarming. For instance:
Every single time, with no exceptions, that I’ve gotten the future wrong, it’s because there was an inadequate diversity of people in the room. It was not that it couldn’t be seen; it was that we were just talking to ourselves.
Technocrats desperately need to hear that, but the prevailing ethos is the idea of a single visionary CEO without other voices to hold him back. As in Zuckerberg's unwillingness to let go of control of his company or his money, or Reed Hastings' belief that school boards should be scrapped because they just get in the Visionary Leader's way.
But then the interviewer asks how our feelings about surveillance are "evolving," and, well, Schwartz doesn't dig very deep.
There will be times when it’s abused, when data is stolen, when people are harmed by it. But for 99% of the people, 99% of the time, it will mean that you didn’t have to show your ticket to get on BART; it means you didn’t have to check out at the supermarket; it means that when somebody stole your kid’s bike, it will have been seen. Oh, and that unhealthy people will be detected before I get on the airplane.
There's no question that folks hav e shown that they are more than willing to fork over huge amounts of personal data for a smidgen of convenience. Hell, people still insist on giving away tons of data just so they can take a "Which kind of exotic cheese are you" quiz on Facebook. But look at how quickly he skips past the down side, and characterizes it as the occasional bad actor, and not a dystopic system of surveillance and control. But here we arrive at an article of misplaced faith.
We’re now in a global village where the truth is everything can be known about everybody.
The truth is that we can collect a great deal of data and factoids about anyone, but that's not everything. This is like believing that if you know your spouse's height, weight, shoe size, favorite color, previous addresses, well, you know everything you can (or need to) know. This is exactly like believing that if you have collected a bunch of standardized test scores from a student, you know that student.
If we could just collect all the observable, quantifiable data, we would know everything about everything. So let us collect it all. Because it's going to happen anyway.
That's the Silicon Valley ethic, and it's wrong on several levels.
First, collecting all the data doesn't make one all-knowing. I'm not just talking about the whole "difference between knowledge and wisdom" thing, or pointing at romantic odes to human complexity and depth (though those things are true, too). Read up on Information Theory and Chaos science-- complex systems define specific, linear predictability. It doesn't matter how many facts you collect--you still can't predict exactly what comes next.
Second, get your paws off our data. Better yet, if you want it, pay for it. If we're imagining our favorite futures, I'd like to imagine one in which customers don't pay for the privilege of being data mined. It's not just that data mining is invasive and obnoxious--the current practitioners are still really bad at it. Feeding that bad data into systems yields bad results.
Third, it's not inevitable. Tech folks--especially ed tech folks--invariably present sales pitches in the guise of future predictions. They are wrong, a lot, in part because they are the techno version of the used car salesman saying, "I can just see you driving this baby out of here." No. You hope to see that, but right now, it's just a sales pitch.
The surveillance state won't be a happy utopia occasionally interrupted by the blip of isolated bad actors. The big use of data is to help mold and direct the behavior of the masses, and the two big motivators for that kind of nudging are 1) the desire to make money and 2) te desire to acquire political power, and we've already seen both in action.
The surveillance state will continue to come after schools, because how else do you gather All The Data except by starting early? Schools are easily seduced partners because too often some folks in charge (and some, sadly, in the classroom) are attracted to the idea that they could get so much more done if they had more data, more control (this is true for public, charter, and private schools). One of the decisions that educational institutions must make, late as it is in the game, is whether they want to help the data miners or become protectors of student data.
They should be protectors. When buying a program, they should require that everything collected will stay within the district's system, to be easily scrubbed when the students leave or graduate. When subscribing to an online service, they should demand ironclad assurances that student data will not be shared (not even with "trusted partners") or kept after the student graduates. Schools are where the foundation of the surveillance state will be laid; schools should be actively and deliberately making sure that foundation doesn't get built.
Sunday, August 16, 2020
Country Club Pod School
So you run a string of private tony country clubs, offering "unique access to sports, fitness, luxury hospitality and family-friendly amenities across multiple clubs," and the pandemic has not been very helpful for your business. But you've got all this space. What can you do to get the money stream flowing again?
Open a school, of course.
Let me introduce you to the Bay Club, an organization offering 24 clubs across 9 campuses, including Portland, Marin, San Francisco, East Bay, Santa Clara, San Jose, Los Angeles, San Diego, and the Peninsula campus. They all sound pretty swanky, but as a sample, here's the Peninsula Campus description:
The Peninsula Campus is designed as an ultimate escape from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. With two premier properties and endless amenities and services, the Peninsula Campus offers a state-of-the-art tennis facility, as well as year-round fitness, aquatics, and family programming. With over thirteen acres between two Bay Club locations, there are plenty of ways for you and your family to play.
On that particular campus, you can join the Redwood Shores club at various levels of swankitude, from individual dues as low as $280/month up to $950/month (on the low end, there is also a $1,000 "initiation fee") with assorted benefits for each level. Fees vary a little bit by location and club, but you get the idea.
So what do you do with, say, 180,000 square feet of empty gym space? You open it up to the hot new world of pod learning.
So the Bay Club now offers the Distance Learning POD Program.
Our on-site Distance Learning PODS feature monitored online learning, extracurricular programs and world-class sports and fitness activities for grades K-12. A turnkey solution for parents and school districts!
The Bay Club has "teamed up with" aka "contracted" KinderCare Education, an outfit that specializes in pre-K care and after-school programming. Also, some "top West Coast universities" are in the mix.
The KinderCare piece is tied to the offerings that cover age 0 through grade 5. The K-5 piece promises to focus on "developing the whole child" through a "rich, nurturing curriculum." The students will get support with remote learning as well as enrichment. For grades 6-12, the promises are more modest-- in addition to "monitoring online learning," they'll get some "athletic and sports clinics led by our fitness professionals." Plus socializing with other students.
For the littles, the cost is $375 /week for non-members, $337.50 for members, and $300 if you have a family membership. The middle and high school programs run $275, $247.50, and $220 a week.
The New York Times just ran a piece about how many folks are being priced out of the learning pod phenomenon; this seems like a fine example of that. And not just priced--I'm sure that the well-manicured luxurious grounds of the Bay Club make it clear who exactly is welcome and who is not (plus transportation, meals, etc)-- this is just not available to all parents. Not everybody is in a position to send their child to private POD school in a literal country club.
And while one might imagine that the idea of Betsy DeVos and others to give public school money to parents to fund pandemic ed (another voucher angle), I remind you that for Bay Club students, there's still a public school somewhere providing the actual distance education. Should they have their funding cut while still doing their job?
Under current pandemic mess rules, we're getting a peek of what education looks like without a robust fully functional public ed system operating, and it looks a lot like a world in which the well-to-do get what they want for their kids, and everyone else just has to scramble for scraps. Experts and historians note (you should really check out this podcast on the subject) that pods threaten to become a new sort of opportunity hoarding, a return to the kind of inequitable education that we created public education to get rid of.
The Bay Club is actually owned by KKR & Co, a massive global investment company. This is a teensy weensy sliver of their business; let's hope that nobody up the corporate ladder notices this and decides to move on.
Oh, and if it seems as if I'm over-reacting to call the Bay Club program a school when they don't even make that claim themselves, let me point out that the model of this kind of pod set-up-- students workin away at coursework delivered via screen while some adult is handy to coach and refocus them-- is exactly the same model as a variety of charter and private schools (looking at you, Summit).
Open a school, of course.
Let me introduce you to the Bay Club, an organization offering 24 clubs across 9 campuses, including Portland, Marin, San Francisco, East Bay, Santa Clara, San Jose, Los Angeles, San Diego, and the Peninsula campus. They all sound pretty swanky, but as a sample, here's the Peninsula Campus description:
On that particular campus, you can join the Redwood Shores club at various levels of swankitude, from individual dues as low as $280/month up to $950/month (on the low end, there is also a $1,000 "initiation fee") with assorted benefits for each level. Fees vary a little bit by location and club, but you get the idea.
So what do you do with, say, 180,000 square feet of empty gym space? You open it up to the hot new world of pod learning.
So the Bay Club now offers the Distance Learning POD Program.
Our on-site Distance Learning PODS feature monitored online learning, extracurricular programs and world-class sports and fitness activities for grades K-12. A turnkey solution for parents and school districts!
The Bay Club has "teamed up with" aka "contracted" KinderCare Education, an outfit that specializes in pre-K care and after-school programming. Also, some "top West Coast universities" are in the mix.
The KinderCare piece is tied to the offerings that cover age 0 through grade 5. The K-5 piece promises to focus on "developing the whole child" through a "rich, nurturing curriculum." The students will get support with remote learning as well as enrichment. For grades 6-12, the promises are more modest-- in addition to "monitoring online learning," they'll get some "athletic and sports clinics led by our fitness professionals." Plus socializing with other students.
For the littles, the cost is $375 /week for non-members, $337.50 for members, and $300 if you have a family membership. The middle and high school programs run $275, $247.50, and $220 a week.
The New York Times just ran a piece about how many folks are being priced out of the learning pod phenomenon; this seems like a fine example of that. And not just priced--I'm sure that the well-manicured luxurious grounds of the Bay Club make it clear who exactly is welcome and who is not (plus transportation, meals, etc)-- this is just not available to all parents. Not everybody is in a position to send their child to private POD school in a literal country club.
And while one might imagine that the idea of Betsy DeVos and others to give public school money to parents to fund pandemic ed (another voucher angle), I remind you that for Bay Club students, there's still a public school somewhere providing the actual distance education. Should they have their funding cut while still doing their job?
Under current pandemic mess rules, we're getting a peek of what education looks like without a robust fully functional public ed system operating, and it looks a lot like a world in which the well-to-do get what they want for their kids, and everyone else just has to scramble for scraps. Experts and historians note (you should really check out this podcast on the subject) that pods threaten to become a new sort of opportunity hoarding, a return to the kind of inequitable education that we created public education to get rid of.
The Bay Club is actually owned by KKR & Co, a massive global investment company. This is a teensy weensy sliver of their business; let's hope that nobody up the corporate ladder notices this and decides to move on.
Oh, and if it seems as if I'm over-reacting to call the Bay Club program a school when they don't even make that claim themselves, let me point out that the model of this kind of pod set-up-- students workin away at coursework delivered via screen while some adult is handy to coach and refocus them-- is exactly the same model as a variety of charter and private schools (looking at you, Summit).
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