How To Undermine The Teaching Of Reading

No, this is not yet another salvo in the reading wars, because I don't  care where you fall on the pure phonics -- just take your holistic guess continuum, you have to believe in the power of content knowledge. 

There's plenty of evidence of the importance of content knowledge, though I'm partial to the old baseball experiment, in which it turned out that students have a higher reading comprehension level if you ask them to read about topics where their content knowledge is strong. 

This doesn't seem particularly mysterious. Sounding out words isn't all that helpful if the sounds add up to a word I've never heard before. And my ability to form an educated guess is limited to things I actually know something about. 

Unfortunately, the high stakes testing area has asked us to think of reading as a collection of "skills" that are sort of free-floating and unattached to actual content, as if "find the main idea" is a task that can be completed by a third grader as easily in a paragraph about baseball as in a paragraph about the origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind. 

And yet the stars are aligned to once again give the short end of the stick to content knowledge rich areas. Worried about getting those test scores back up (because that's how Learning Loss is going to be measured in their neighborhood), administrators are bearing down on reading classes. I have not yet heard of anyone repeating the worst excesses of one former principal in my old district; he took students with low pre/practice test scores and putted them in two math and two reading classes per day and pulled them out of math and science entirely. But plenty of administrators are hurting the cause in other ways. For instance, elementary principals like to stick history and science in lousy time slots-- last fifteen minutes before lunch, last twelve minutes before lining up for buses, only once a week. 

Deciphering words without a connection to content knowledge is not only harder, but it's an unfinished process, like opening a door to nowhere. And not just a door to nowhere, but a door without hinges or a frame. Trying to teach reading without content knowledge is like teaching a student how to open a door with just a door, by itself, lying in the middle of a field. You can teach them the parts of the door and how a doorknob works, but it's really hard to operate the door that way, and not very fun or interesting.  Love of reading, the most desirable outcome, requires an ability to understand and operate the door (decipher the words), but it also requires the door to open up on a world, not a blank nothing. 

Look, tortured metaphors aside, this is an area in which I agree with people I often disagree with in other areas-- when the Board of Directors is ready to learn to read, I want the foundation to be built on tons of content knowledge and vocabulary. I don't give a rat's hairy tushy about their DIBELS scores, and I already know they can pretend to read (If you want someone to provide a dramatic recitation of "Mighty, Mighty Construction Site," I've got your guys right here). When they sound out a word, I want them to recognize it. When they struggle through a text, I want them to have enough understanding of what's going on to use a context to help them. I want them to grasp that the marks on the page correspond to actual Things in the World, and I want their teachers to help them fill their brains up with all the knowledge of all the things.

And not because content knowledge will help them raise their test scores but because the whole point of the written word is to transmit understanding and knowledge and ideas and feelings and insights across space and time, human to human. Content knowledge, rich and deep and broad, is an aid to reading because it is the whole point and purpose of reading. "Reading," whether by decoding or by best-guessing, without any connection to the world, is just a performative school trick that misses the point and purpose of language. Don't shortchange content knowledge so that you can teach reading. Teach children content so that you can teach them to read.

What's Too Controversial for the Classroom

John Wallis was a fresh new teacher, hired to teach drama, world mythology, and speech and debate at Neosho Junior High in southwestern Missouri. He hung a gay pride flag and a sign saying "In This Classroom, EVERYONE Is Welcome." He was told a parent complained, so he took the items down. Students asked why. He explained, said the flag did not represent what he would teach in his class, and went a bit further:

“But I followed it up by saying, ‘If you have a problem with the flag representing me, or students who identify as LGBTQ+, then you can probably find a different class,’” said Wallis. He said that prompted more complaints from parents.

He was then asked to sign a letter saying he would keep his "personal agenda on sexuality" out of the classroom, including no displays of any references to gender or sexuality. 

So he resigned.

Not the first or last teacher to be out of a job over personal beliefs in the classroom, but we're definitely into an era in which it's getting harder to see where the line is. (And we should note that the line's presentation via the press is also muddied up because we can never be certain that we're getting all of sides and all of the details visible at ground zero.)

There are certainly limits to a teacher's speech, both legal and ethical. Legally, teachers are government employees and that means they don't enjoy the full freedom of speech in a classroom as a private citizen on the street. That is exactly why a classroom teacher cannot legally lead her students in prayer--because that would constitute a government endorsement of a particular religious faith. And yes, there's a deep irony in the fact that the same people who want to erode that particular barrier want to erect an iron-clad one around teachers who bring "controversial issues" into the room.

The "How To" for handling controversial issues in an academic way is not all that tricky. I taught American Literature, which means I taught religion, race, gender, etc etc etc, and my basic template was, "I'm not here to tell you whether the osquolots were right or wrong, but I want you to understand how they saw the world and how that affected how they wrote about it." And then I'd make the osquolot case as clearly as I could. 

That seems pretty straightforward, and yet it does not guarantee smooth sailing. For some parents, it will be too controversial to talk about the osquolots at all, as if they had some sort of valid viewpoint. These parents often end up home or private schooling, so that their child never has to encounter an idea that those parents disapprove of. Mostly this story ends with parents learn that it's nearly impossible to raise a child who believes only what you believe.

But that's the academic area. It gets trickier when, like Wallis, and like too many students, you are dealing with topics that are not merely academic. For some non-zero number of parents, a teacher who simply walks into the classroom delivers an unspoken message of "I'm gay and I'm free to walk around and be a teacher in a school" and that message is controversial enough. A non-zero number of parents will find it too controversial is a Black teacher lives their Black life in the classroom in front of students. 

This is the problem with "don't be controversial" directives, pleas to "just teach facts" and "don't push your opinions"--they too often mean "just be in the classroom in the same way you would if you were a heterosexual white person." 

All good teachers know that connecting with students, building a relationship, is critical, which means you have to bring part of your story into the classroom. It's a tricky balancing act. You don't want to be that teacher who overshares, whose students know you were on a date last night and how it went, but you also don't want to be an impersonal robot who apparently gets clicked off and leaned in the closet at night. "Students have to know you care about them" is time-tested advice, but it requires that them to know that you can care about anything. Plus, in some cases you are one of the few adults in their orbit, so you're a bit of a role model; how to have an opinion about something without being an ass is a good skill to model.

Side note: All of this is easier if you live in the district where you teach and students see you out in the community (is there anything as exciting for a young student as discovering that your teacher buys groceries and wears jeans). It's just one more reason that you really ought to live in the district where you teach. End of side note.

LGBTQ students, students of color, students with any number of challenges-- they all benefit from seeing teachers like them in front of a classroom. So do all the other students. And that means seeing what those teachers care about, living their lives. I kept pictures of my family on my desk all the years I taught; why shouldn't a married LGBTQ colleague be able to do the same?

We are stuck in an age of agitated groups, most of them currently on the right. Is there anything we can't raise a fuss about. I was watching an episode of Daniel Tiger yesterday with the Board of Directors, and it was all about sharing when you play with someone, and I realized sadly that this would be controversial content because some folks don't cotton to sharing which sounds a little socialist and in this world you fight for what's yours and you hold onto it. And folks who cry controversy over things like actual facts, rendering science ands history classes an uphill struggle. And folks who think children shouldn't learn anything that their parents don't know or believe. And folks who don't believe in vaccines.

The missing factor in all of these "teacher leaves the classroom" stories is an administration with a backbone. Because it certainly seems as if the answer to "What is too controversial for the classroom" is "pretty much everything." I've worked under controversy-averse administrations, and "don't do anything that will get me a phone call" is a terrible administration policy, especially in times when some folks are intent on whipping up controversy for their own political gains. Drawing that fuzzy, ever-shifting line is part of an administration's job, but they have to have the nerve not to fold to every single parent phone call.

I have no idea whether John Wallis was destined to be a great teacher or not. But I do know that as districts have more and more trouble filing positions, "Go in that classroom, but don't be gay or Black or any of this other stuff on our list in front of the students" is not a great recruiting tool. Nobody's career dream is to be an empty suit. 

ICYMI: 9/12 Edition (9/12)

 9/11 was one thing; what started to happen in this country on the twelfth is something else entirely, but we don't have national days of remembrance about that. Meanwhile, there's plenty to read about in the world of education.

NH "education freedom" accounts cost soaring

NH implemented vouchers; now it's turning out to be way more expensive than advocates promised.

Proctorio's awful reviews disappear

Cory Doctorow takes a look at what's been happening with that horrible monitoring scam software.

How we abolished child labor

Betsy Wood is at The Conversation to remind us that the end of child labor didn't exactly happen because we were feeling all noble. More like the Depression and fears of white slavery.

I Can't Believe I'm Looking at Test Scores

Nancy Flanagan says enough already with the big standardized test scores.

CRT turning school boards into GOP proving grounds

One more piece, this from Politico, about how the right is using critical race theory to bring chaos and recruitment to local school boards.

Having just one Black teacher can change a life

Still an issue (despite how you may feel about Citizen Education) is the low number of Black teachers in schools.

Real children in real time

Eduhonesty looks at the assumption that students are just waiting for the chance to do some school and chomping at the bit to get educated.

Lack of trusted authority is why COVID is kicking our butts

Steven Singer takes a look at how we got here.

Charter schools scary future

Jennifer Berkshire writes in The New Republic about the rightward lurch of the charter world.

When one window closes, another opens

Grumpy Old Teacher on the love of testing and Florida's mistakes.

River Runner

Okay, this is just a cool thing. Put a drop of water anywhere on this map of the US and it will tell you and map the path that drop will take to the ocean

Arne Duncan and Pedagogical Badger Hats

Arne Duncan was at it again, popping up on Fareed Zakaria's CNN show to talk about post-covid education (looking kind of Herman Munster-ish on his Zoom screen). 

Much of his shtick was predictable. Students are months behind (which actually means, of course, scores on the Big Standardized Test are down, we think). We have to meet their social emotional needs, as we accelerate learning (just, you know, teach faster, because teachers have been holding back all these years). 

Zakaria says/asks, the "digital economy" did awesome in most sectors, but in education learning-through-a-screen didn't really deliver. Howcum?

Whatever else his failings, Arne could often say the right thing, and he does that here. Students are social beings, and being unable to have a personal connection with friends and teachers was rough on them. He's also worried about the "missing" 2.5 million students, which he suggests could be a lost generation, and that strikes me as a bit over the top, but reflective of a government bureaucrat attitude that if we don't have official paperwork on a person, they don't exist. But his idea of mobilizing teachers, social workers, etc to go out and find these children and make sure they're okay--that's not a terrible impulse. High touch, not high tech, says Arne of the solution.

Zakaria says that it sounds like there's no room for hybrid or virtually school in Duncan's vision, so now Arne will pivot and pretty much take back what he just said. And this is the part you may have seen quoted.

Duncan suggests, as an example, that we've got all these algebra teachers across the country, teaching just 100-125 kids. 

I think if we figured out who the best, who the Albert Einstein algebra teachers were in our country and rather than teaching 100 students each day, think about if they were teaching 1,000 or 10,000 or 100,000, and then we could use that class time the in person time, for tutorials and small group instruction. So there are some lessons that we can take and run with.

This is a dumb idea. It's not a new idea--reformsters have dreamed of this world where we pay fewer teachers to teach more students. But this precisely the sort of thing that sounds good to somebody who doesn't really understand teaching at all. I mean, what person imagines that teaching 15 kids in person and teaching 100,000 online are basically the same thing, that any teacher who's good at one will also be good at the other. It's the Duncan crowds same old idea-- teaching is a human engineering problem and once you figure out what buttons to press on the student module, that (plus expectations) will just cause the student modules to learn. 

Duncan says we'll have to make access to equipment and wifi as ubiquitous as electricity and running water (oops--I have some places for him to visit). He nods at "anytime anywhere" learning, but then he pivots back and says that being in a physical school is the way to go. 

Fareed asks what the hope is, and Duncan says we can't go back to normal because normal didn't serve tens of millions of students and I'm now yelling at the screen to remind Duncan that he and his cronies created that normal and this is one of my least favorite Duncan moves--decrying policies that he pretends he didn't have a hand in creating. Gah. Also, he wants to accelerate learning somehow--maybe do away with three months of summer vacation (he's going to blame it on the agrarian economy which is incorrect), or maybe some children get 9 months a year and other children get 11, and longer days and I can't even start on how many ways this is dumb-- NCLB and RttT already gave us the treat of students with low test scores being punished by losing arts and science and recess, but sure, let's take their family time and after school play and summer vacations, too. Great idea, Arne.

After a stop at food, Duncan is on the old "Let's flip this on its head" and make time the variable and learning the constant. "Let's give every child exactly what they need to be successful," says Arne, and "successful" is doing a lot of work there, but not as much as "what they need" because mostly we don't really know--unless we pick a meagre, cramped definition of "successful" like, say, "gets a certain score on the Big Standardized Test."

He's going to bear down on the time thing, saying that "basically" you pass algebra by sitting in a desk five days a week for nine months, and I can personally guarantee you that is NOT how you pass algebra. Arne just wants you to sit there till you "learn algebra" which might be three, four, nine or fifteen months and while I get the mastery learning arguments and agree with many, Arne is unintentionally highlighting some of the structural and tactical issues in trying to make his outcome based/competency based/proficiency centered school actually work. But Duncan wants to take these ideas "to scale" because they could really accelerate progress (except, presumably, for the student who's spending 15 months in algebra class). 

The sardine superteacher, dispensing smartitude over a class of thousands (who can clock out once they pass a check test) is an old favorite. Fans have been pointing to many students who did just fine under the cobbled-together patchwork kluge of virtual learning that schools used last year, and certainly some did (just as a few students do well in cyberschool). But in education we have to be careful about the "some students do well" argument. Really careful.

Some students will always do well. Regardless (or even in spite of) what teachers do, these students will learn. I could tell every student in the classroom to wear a badger on their head, and some students would do just fine. They're bright, and they're motivated. That's why many teachers love to have them in class. It's why colleges and universities are such a fertile source of terrible teaching--because students are there on purpose and mostly motivated to learn (or at least get grades) whatever Dr. Dimbulb is doing up there at the front of the 500-person classroomitorium. 

Duncan is right when he says that human connection is critical to education, in this and in any other fall. But his idea about putting some "Einstein" on a 100,000 student internet hookup is deeply, deeply dumb. But man--the man can still make me yell at a screen. 

Backpacks Full Of Cash

Jeanne Allen's magical phrase, turned into a rhetorical weapon against her and other free market choicers, never seems to quite go away, perhaps because all sides find it an apt description of free-market choice. Right now they're getting ready to load up more backpacks out in LA. Allen was sure that this was a great portrayal of the awesomeness of choice, but I'm not sure we ever thought it through.

After all, in this vision of school, students are couriers. Their job is to carry backpacks full of cash to various vendors and business operators like little pack animals. The backpacks full of cash image unintentionally focuses on what many fans of the free market model are very interested in--easily moved, largely unguarded cash. We could as easily describe students as little foxes or minks, important mostly for the valuable pelts that they carry with them (and from which they will eventually be separated). 

One of the great tricks of free market choicers has been to hide their primary focus in plain sight, and the focus is not education or even choice, but in free marketizing public education. 

And yet, for years, few people stop to ask, "Hey, wait a minute. Why does school choice have to involve market forces? Why do we have to strap money to the backs of children?"

After all, we could offer school choice within a public system. We could offer a variety of different schools in one system. We could (and I'd argue already do) offer a variety of school options under one roof. If legislators believe that public schools are choking in too much red tape and regulation, well, then--get rid of them. Every educational goal that choice fans espouse could be met within the public system we already have. The goals the public system can't meet are the structural ones, the ones that are all about freeing businessmen to pocket some part of the vast stack of money we spend on education. 

Why does a requirement of school choice have to be that private operators must make money from it? 

I get that some folks have a sincere belief that market forces drive competition which drives excellence and innovation. I don't see a lot of evidence in the real world. Success in the market comes through many means other than excellence in products (eg Coke, Walmart, Microsoft), and once market dominance is achieved, market command is used to squash competition and buy up innovation before it can become a threat (eg see above). The free market does not foster superior quality; the free market fosters superior marketing. They compete over the fat middle and leave the outliers to fend for themselves (eg cable tv). Then multinational winners in the marketplace create their own sets of laws, regulations and bureaucracy that any nation's government would envy. 

So I see no benefits to letting free market forces loose in a vital public service. On top of the fact that they don't deliver any of the benefits ascribed to them, they foster this view of students as pack animals tasked with delivering backpacks full of cash. 

There are valid arguments to be made in favor of some version of choice. But none of them require the inclusion of privately owned-and-operated marketeers.

Of course, to offer choice within the public system would require more money. Choice as we're currently doing it requires more money, but various shell games are being used to hide that fact. But here we are in the same old place--we can think of cool things that might make education better, but those things would cost more money, and when it comes right down to it, we don't want to pay that much for the education system (our own kids, sure--but not for Those Peoples' Children). 

So for some folks, the solution is to strap cash to the backs of children and turn them loose so that various business operators can compete at the work of coaxing the cash couriers into one business's doorway. Instead the object of education, the center around which school revolves, free marketeering transforms them into conduits of cash, one more cog in the machinery instead of young humans that the machine should serve. 

Who Is The Protagonist

Friend of the Institutue and religious historian Adam Laats has what I think is the very best take on the "CRT" panic. I've seen him say this a couple of times--here's a quote from a Guardian article:

“The heart and soul of the anti-CRT outburst is this anxiety of the changing protagonists in the story of American history,” said Laats.

That, for me, absolutely hits the nail on the head. It's not just an argument about what the story of America is, or even controversial topics or trying to make white kids feel guilty. On a really gut level, this freak-out is about people who don't want to hear the story as if it were somebody else's story and they were just a bit player.

You can understand the 1619 project that way--as an answer to the question, "What if we told this story not as the story of the United States government or the story of white settlers coming to a new world, but as the story of Black folks." If you've never really grabbed the notion of "centering" someone in a "narrative," these terms work fine as well--telling the story as if X is the main character.

We've seen that narrative exercise. There are a couple of great versions of the Three Little Pigs with the wolf as the protagonist. Gregory Maguire has made an entire career (and inspired a hit musical) out of making different characters the protagonists of stories you already know.

It's more challenging when you make it personal. Every one of us is the bad guy in someone else's story,. and some people never make peace with that in their entire lives. But the history of this country has always had as its protagonists a bunch of white folks. They have gotten better over the years at sharing that stage--but it has mostly always still been their stage. 

As a lifelong English teacher and lit guy, this is a framing that really clicks for me. This is a short post, but I want to put this idea down where I can find it. I expect I'll be using "protagonist" again.

IN: Parents And Their Rights

 Indiana is one of several states that has some version of a Parents Bill of Rights, in their case "released" back in June by the state Attorney General Todd Rokita, a GOP politician who hoped to follow in Mike Pence's footsteps, but couldn't quite make it. AG was kind of his political comeback. Democrats called the Bill of Rights a continuation of his 2024 gubernatorial campaign.

Rokita says, “Education policy and curriculum should reflect the values of Indiana families while meeting the mandatory requirements set forth in law." And in fact this particular batch of rights is mostly about being able to overrule your child's school:

*To question and address your child’s school officials and school board members at publicly designated meetings with proper notice of the meetings provided
*To question and review the curriculum taught in your child’s school by questioning local school boards and school administrators
*To expect that the academic curriculum taught in your child’s school aligns with Indiana and federal law
*To participate in the selection and approval of academic standards for the State of Indiana
*To obtain educational materials and curriculum taught to your child in the classroom
*To run as a candidate for your local school board

Rokita has heard first hand from parents around the state (because these kinds of laws/rules/edicts are always handed down because "some people told me they really want this" and never" because it suits my personal ideology" or "because I think this will be good for getting votes) and they are concerned about "the ideologies being imposed in their child's school curriculum."

It's an interesting stance to come across during Labor Day weekend, a weekend marked by articles reminding us that child labor laws ended the notion that children were the property of anyone--not employers, not parents, not anyone. It's also part of the general picture of education in Indiana, where voucher schools include a variety of schools teaching that evolution never happened, that Black Lives Matter causes racial strife, and that "black immigration" is how all those Black folks got here. Also, even though slavery was bad, "much was done in the name of abolition that was as evil as the institution of slavery itself."

So we end up with this weirdly tilted system where a parent can complain that their child is being exposed to "critical race theory" stuff, even as tax dollars go to private schools that teach the very biased view of history that CRT aims to point out. 

Meanwhile, of course, if you're not a parent, but just a citizen, taxpayer or employer who has thoughts about what students need to learn in order to take a spot as a responsible member of society, you get no say at all. It is parents who get the tools to craft a version of reality that suits them, everyone else be damned. 

Sigh. It's not that I don't get it--at least sort of. You raise your babies and you send them out into the world and you give control of a part of their lives over to people who are not you, and that is scary. But if your world view is so fragile that exposure to any single contradictory viewpoint jeopardizes it, maybe you need to reconsider.