Replying to Moms for Liberty: What about These Books?

 This exchange turned up on my Twitter feed.

How do you propose that parents handle the books they are finding in the school libraries? I’m not totally disagreeing with you, but they are finding these books everywhere and they are upset. Can you blame them?

— Moms for Liberty (@Moms4Liberty) November 3, 2021

 I'm going to try to answer this question, because I think it's a legitimate one. 

Caveats first. Yes, the MFL tweet is kind of a non-sequitor. And yes, there are plenty of reasons to suspect that Moms for Liberty is a group at least as interested in being political players as they are in safeguarding children (e.g. this outburst at one of their events). But I'll engage with anyone who appears to be making a good faith effort to discuss issues. Also, I'm a parent, and I get the kind of gut-level nervousness that comes with entrusting your child to people who may or may not share your values. So I'm going to attempt a serious answer to what may or may not be a serious ask.

This is my reply to Moms for Liberty.

What should a parent who finds "these books" in the school library do?

Step one, in all times you're dealing with a school, is to assume good intent. Start with the assumption that the school is staffed and run by people who value children and helping them grow to be their best selves, who went into education because they did, in fact, want to teach children. If you start out with the assumption that public schools are actually a sinister conspiracy to indoctrinate children or an elaborate scam being run to fill the coffers of teachers unions, it will be hard to find any basis to move forward. 

Also, assuming ill will and searching for gotcha's will lead you to make absurd accusations. If you assume evil intent and the whole purpose of your search is to "catch them" being evil, you might as well withdraw your child and enroll in some private school now. But in general I believe that it is always better to search for understanding rather than confirmation of your already-formed beliefs, in part because you will always find confirmation, whether it's there or not.

Next. Have friends or people you trust outside your bubble with whom to check your work. I have to believe that if the lady who objected to the sexy seahorse book had turned to someone outside the group and asked if she was really seeing something objectionable or not, someone would have told her to calm down. 

If you are certain in your heart that you do not want your child exposed to a certain book, you should next check the chain of command in your local district. Probably the most common mistake made by parents with a school complaint is addressing that complaint to someone who has no power to address the complaint. So who oversees book acquisition for your school library? Is there a procedure in place to challenge a book? What the circumstances under which a child goes to the library--with a particular class, or during a study hall, or barely ever (some students go a long time without ever seeing the inside of a library)? If your circulation system is computerized, is there a way to monitor what your child checks out? Are some books in the library kept in the back room and available only on request (school libraries do this for a variety of reasons)?  Can you file a request with the librarian that your child not be allowed to have access to certain books? 

When you identify the people involved, talk to them. Make yourself available for a human conversation (e-mail and texting often lead to misunderstandings of tone in charged conversations). Share your concerns, and listen to their response. If you are unhappy with the outcome, then move up through the chain of command. 

Please note: all of the above is in reference to access to one of "these books" for your own child. When you want to ban access to the book for all students in the school, we're entering a whole new conversation. You do not like it when you feel that the school is substituting their judgment for your own parental judgment; how should your neighbors feel when you insist on substituting your own judgment for theirs?

What we've seen so far on the lists of "these books" range from books that probably cross the line for a lot of folks to books that are primarily objectionable to racists. The demands to get rid of books (e.g. I Am Rosa Parks) that are simply an accurate portrayal of historical events in which white folks did not handle themselves very well are not supportable. I'm willing to listen to someone's explanation of why they are bad for children, but I honestly cannot imagine what a good explanation would be. Some of these may very well make some children sad. It's not clear to me why that is a bad thing.

The list of "these books" has become really broad and wide, with some of it way into Chinese Communist re-education camp territory, and the longer this wrangling goes, the more conservatives are twisting themselves into pretzels trying to not look racist while still backing racist book bans. Since the new governor of Virginia won a campaign by attacking a major novel by arguably the greatest American author in recent history, I'm not confident that this is going to end any time soon.

The thing is--banning a book is huge, huge deal. Having it pulled from a school library in an attempt to keep it away from students is a huge, huge deal. Not only that, but it doesn't work. The good people of Boston banned Huckleberry Finn (too much friendliness between a white boy and a Black man), and they turned it into a best seller. I guarantee you that the books that have turned up on these current banning lists are now being sought out by the students MFL wanted to protect.

I see a huge irony in your current movement. Many of your folks are also anti-vax and anti-mask, arguing that simply letting students be exposed to the virus will not be a problem because natural immunity and their own strength will protect them. And yet when it comes to "these books," the approach is to prevent exposure at all costs. 

I taught high school and middle school English for 39 years. Students mostly grow up to be the people their parents set them up to be. Sometimes that means they grow up and hold onto their parents' values every step of the way. Sometimes they grow up and their experience leads them to move away from their parents' values because they see a world that does not match what their parents described. But books from the school library rarely, if ever, have a role in that process.

So I guess the last big step I'd offer is to trust your children. Talk to them about the books in question. If you have raised them well, with a string foundation in morals and decency, nothing they see in a book that they found in the school library is going to suddenly alter their world view. And if you have tried to raise them with a stunted, fragile worldview, nothing you can do will keep that from being shattered by the world at some point. 

As with many issues in the country, involving politicians who care far less about student well-being than about identifying an issue that can win them some votes--well, those folks are not going to help. Unfortunately, they're about to be all over this, and that's not going to help anybody. 

Classroom Management Secrets

This question has popped up a couple of times on my screen lately:

Which is the more essential classroom skill set - subject matter and pedagogical expertise OR the ability to “manage” behavioral issues?

It's a trick question. The ability to "manage" a classroom is rooted in subject matter and pedagogical expertise.

If you have ever wrangled toddlers, you probably know this simple trick--always be moving toward something. When I'm out and about with the Board of Directors, it's a losing proposition to say, "Okay, time to stop jumping off that log." It is never time to stop jumping off that log, and saying that it is simply opens a whole debate about when, if ever, such an imaginary time could actually come to pass. Instead, the winning proposition is, "Okay, let's go look at fire trucks." Do that, and log jumping will end on its own.

In other words, always be moving toward something rather than away from something.

In teacher school, this concept is expressed as "Focus on what you want them to do, not what you want them to not do." 

This makes many layers of sense. For one, the direction to stop doing something is always a step or two removed from your actual objective. Presumably you want students to "stop talking" for some reason, so why not move directly to the main thing you actually want-- look at this diagram or finish writing your sentences or tell me how this widget should be adjusted. So ask for that. "I'm not going to start class until everyone is quiet," is not the threat that you think it is.

But being able to move toward something requires you to have a firm grasp of what you want to move toward. Everyone has their favorite teaching metaphors; one of mine is thinking of teaching as helping students navigate a large territory, covered with forest and ponds and hills and any number of features. A teacher is a guide to that territory, and the better you know the territory, the better you can serve as a guide. You have to know what's there, the many ways to get from one point to another, and the various pitfalls that one might encounter. 

What are you trying to teach, why are you trying to teach it, and how are you trying to teach it. Know the answers and push forward, keeping your eye on the target just like a driver keeps their eyes on the road. 

It's not an easy balance to maintain. Push forward too fast and students are left behind. Too slowly, and they get bored waiting for you. Either way, issues will develop.

Really, classroom management is not like organizing activities for some strange alien race. Young humans have low tolerance for the same things as grown humans. Wasted time. Pointless activities. Demands for compliance for compliance's sake. Disrespect. These things draw out the contrary behavior in grown humans; why should young humans be any different? 

Yes, there is a world of classroom management techniques that are worth knowing. But everything is rooted in Knowing What The Hell You're Doing, both in your grasp of content and your lesson design. This is why tying teachers to a script or a tightly defined program is a recipe for chaos, and that's why so many schools that do such tying team it up with a heavily enforced demand for student compliance, a heavy-handed attempt to beat down the problems that they have asked for in their instructional design.

Deep content knowledge. Sound instructional design. Respect. Those three pillars undergird the whole business of classroom management. They look different depending on the teacher and the students, but without any one of them, you'll simply be trying to right the structure with a patchwork of classroom management techniques and compliance demands. 

ICYMI: Spooky Edition (10/31)

The Board of Directors will be out scrounging for candy dressed as a member of Koo Koo Kangaroo and a Construction Guy. I will be on the front steps of the Institute handing out candy to costumed wanderers of all ages. Hope you are having a fun evening wherever you are.

Where Facts Were No Match For Fear

Not actually about education, but certainly provides some insights into the kind of stuff we're seeing these days. The New York Times looks at an attempt to raise tourism in Montana.

Why we are suing Pennsylvania over school funding

Yes, that's happening in PA, and will probably provide a lesson of one sort or another for activists in other states. On The Morning Call.

This is the problem with ranking schools

I never get tired of watching people chastise US News and their crappy ranking lists. This time it's Ethan Hutt in the Washington Post.

Methods for comparing school site spending (and correctly making charter school comparisons)

Bruce Baker at School Finance 101. I know, it doesn't sound very sexy, but it's awfully useful for making comparisons that are actually valid.

A look at the groups supporting school board protesters nationwide

Anya Kamenetz at NPR giving a good overview of all these various outfits stirring the pot these days. 

Grit has been called the secret to success. New research says maybe not.\

Inc. has some unsurprising news--grit might not be the great be-all that Angela Duckworth and friends suggested it was.

Need teachers?

Nancy Flanagan looks at the staffing problems faced in districts across the country. Gee, what could the problem be?

Texas law due for a rework

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial board has a few thoughts about the poorly-written Texas gag law that led to a call for both-sidesing the Holocaust 

A Gay Music Teacher Got Married. The Brooklyn Diocese Fired Him.

This story from the New York Times explains how a religious school can get away with this, and will continue to.

The GOP's grievance industrial complex invades the classroom

Jennifer Berkshire in The Nation offers more perspective on the current dust-up across the country that has drawn a target on school districts.

Schools facing critical race theory battles are diversifying rapidly, analysis finds

This NBC piece from back in September is worth revisiting because it offers an answer to the question, "What do all these up-in-arms districts have in common." The answer may be that white folks have become less of a majority there.

Matt Krause’s campaign for attorney general comes with a reading list

Texas state rep Matt Krause has a list of 850 questionable books that he wants schools to reconsider. He's also running for state attorney general. Great opening line in this Texas Tribune piece-- "Book bans don't really work, except in politics."

Critical race theory: a case study in appropriation

From Friend of the Institute Barth Keck at CT News Junkie, a great reminder of how we got here. They said what they were going to do, they said they were doing it, they bragged about how successful they were at doing it, they said they'd done it. 

Your new Glenn Youngkin-approved AP English curriculum

Alexandra Petri is a national treasure. Sharp satire at the Washington Post.

The Sentences Computers Can't Understand

 Alternate title: Reason #451,632 that computer software, no matter how many times its vendors call it AI, should be allowed to assess student writing. Though you can also file this under "reasons that content knowledge is the foundation of literacy."

Our ability to use language is astonishing and magical. Now that the Board of Directors are 4.5 years old, I've again lived through the absolutely amazing spectacle of human language development. There are so many things we do without thinking--or rather, we do them with thinking that is barely conscious. And this is where software is still trying to catch up.

Meet the Winograd Schema. It's a collection of sentences that humans have little trouble understanding, but which confuse computers.

Frank felt crushed when his longtime rival Bill revealed that he was the winner of the competition. Who was the winner?

The drain is clogged with hair. It has to be cleaned. What has to be cleaned?

It's true that if a student wrote these in an essay, we might suggest they go back and punch the sentence up to reduce ambiguity. But for English language users who understand rivals and winners and competition and hair and drains and clogging, it's not hard to understand what these sentences mean. 

Well, not hard for humans. For computers, on the other hand. 

It's always important to remember that computers don't "understand" anything (as my professor told us in 1978, computers are as dumb as rocks). What computer can do is suss out patterns. Software that imitates language use does so basically (warning: gross oversimplification ahead) by just looking at giant heaps of examples and working out the pattern. When you read that GPT-3 is better than GPT-2, mostly what that means is that they've figured out a way to feed it even more examples to break down. When engineers say that the software is "learning," what they mean is that the software has broken down a few thousand more examples of how and when the word "hair" is used, not that the software has learned what hair is and how it works. 

This type of learning is how AI often wanders far astray, learning racist language or failing to recognize Black faces--the algorithm (really, a better name for these things than AI) can only "learn" from the samples it encounters.

So AI cannot read. It can only look at a string of symbols and check to see if the use of those symbols fits generally within the patterns established by however many examples it has "seen." And it cannot tell whether or not your student has written a coherent, clever, or even accurate essay--it can only tell if your student has used symbols in ways that fall within the parameters of the ways those symbols have been used in the examples it has broken down.

Essay assessment software has no business assessing student essays. 

As a bonus, here's a good little video on the topic from Tom Scott, whose usual thing is unusual places, but who also dips into language stuff.

How I Taught Controversial Texts

So the critical race theory panic has, in many cases, boiled down to a good old-fashioned desire to ban books, most notably in Virginia where, somehow, Toni Morrison's Beloved is being debated (and, I should add, spoiled for those who haven't read it). I am not going to make my argument against banning here, because that's a book in itself. But I am going to talk about what the teaching of these scary texts can actually look like in a classroom.

One of the things that inevitably happens when the book banning talk starts is a reductiveness, a highlighting of little pieces, ripped from context in the same way that a seventh grader might start showing his buddies "just the dirty parts" of some book. 

But context is everything--both the context within the book and the book's context within the classroom. Despite David Coleman's attempt to separate reading from context, context is, if not everything, pretty damn close to it.

For many decades. I taught mostly 11th grade English, including the Honors (pre-AP) class (a class that I originated at our school). As is typical for the junior year in US high schools, the course focused on United States literature, and so there were plenty of controversial texts, including a Toni Morrison novel. And while I pushed the envelope some times, I never in my career got In Trouble for a reading assignment or class philosophical content. I can't say that I know the secret for every teacher, but I can tell you what I did.

Academic neutrality and trust.

I started the year by being up front. "We will be reading and talking about issues of religion, gender, and race," I told the students. "We'll be talking and reading about the many different ways people in this country have viewed the world and how we're still affected by those ideas today. My job is not convince you that any one view is right or wrong, but to get you to understand how they saw things. You can accept or reject their views as you wish."

I repeated that basic formula repeatedly through the year when it was needed. And I lived by it. And I graded by it. Teachers often say that students are welcome to their own opinions in the classroom, but students will wait to see if you mean it, or if this is a class where you get points for agreeing with the teacher. So you have to show them.

This does not mean you pretend not to have an opinion. I couldn't anyway, because my opinion was on the op-ed page of the local paper once a week, but also because I couldn't. What I could do was model rational, fair argument with them and--most importantly--grade their work and writing based on how well they did the job of making their point and not on how well they agreed with me. Once students believe that they really don't have to agree with you, all sorts of good stuff can happen.

Explain the controversy.

Tell them why Huck Finn has been variously banned for being too racist and not racist enough. Explain how radical Kate Chopin was back in the day. Depending on the class, you may find yourself re-enacting it in class (hardly a year went by that some students did not find Edna Pontellier to be a crazy slut). Offer perspectives, but let them wrangle. Let them have the argument in their own voices.

Know what you're doing.

A teacher should always, always be able to answer the question "Why are we studying this stuff." You have to know. My students learned early in the year that if they asked the question I would answer it, and sometimes I would answer it even if they didn't ask, and mostly they just stopped asking because the point of the question was to throw me off. But it goes back to the trust thing--time is a valuable thing, even when you are 16, and nobody should be knowingly wasting it.

Embrace both where they are and rising and advancing.

There's a great Ron Swanson line that we quote repeatedly here at the Institute-- "I have the toes I have." Meaning, we are where we are, and you can't live the life you wish you had--only the one you have. Students are where they are. Despite all the panic over teacher indoctrination, the fact is that you will rarely budge the needle on the beliefs that they bring from home.

But I also believe that everything that rises must converge. If they can develop the habit of inquiry, discussion, debate, exploration, questioning, then I believe that they'll increase in understanding. Maybe not till way later, but still. This is what I object to most in the CRT panic movement--the idea that children's curiosity and growth should be clamped down so that they never have a thought or idea that their parents don't approve of. That's not healthy (and most of those parents will eventually find it blows up in their faces). 

None of this means you can't challenge student beliefs. But I deliberately let go of the notion that I was going to fix them, or condemn them for believing things they may someday grow out of. Doesn't mean you have to approve of the worst stuff (and I've encountered some awful stuff). Hate the sin, love the sinner, or whatever version of that you prefer.

Avoid surprises.

One of the advantages of a smallish school is that nobody ever walked into my classroom with no clue about what was going to happen. And my classroom routine always included lots of ploughing the road for coming attractions, so that nobody was ever caught flatfooted. The reading list was in their hands at the end of the previous year, so families had lots of time to consider what was coming (and sometimes dropped for a class without all those texts).

This idea also applies to your administration. If you can help it, never let your administration b e surprised by a phone call from an angry parent. My bosses always already knew what was on the reading list and what potential issues came with those works. If you're worried that telling your admins what you're about to do might result in them telling you not to do it--well, better finding out now than when some angry parent wants your hide, because they surely won't back you up then.

Timing matters.

All of the above happened before we ever got to Morrison's Song of Solomon. So by the time we got there I could say, "This book is a solid R rating, with language and images that are suitable for grown-ups, and I trust you to be able to handle it like grown-ups." Don't get out the scary stuff before you've built an environment of trust, respect, and safety.

Offer alternatives.

I always offered the option for alternative selections. I was only ever taken up on it twice. Both times, the students relented (in one case, taking a sharpie to black out all the naughty words). But I still offered an alternative every year because I knew aspects of the novel might be outside some students' comfort zones. But they always rose to the challenge.

I could pull quotes from Song of Solomon that might shock and alarm some folks, particularly if I presented them in such a way that you imagined me just putting that quote up on the board without context on the first day of school; that would be a great technique if your goal was just to get me to ban the book. And sure, there are some things out there that no amount of context could redeem (because there are over three million teachers in this country and on any given day, one of them, somewhere, is making a dumb choice). But in the hands of responsible professional educators, a controversial text can illuminate and educate and challenge and foster growth (even if not exactly a direction one might have predicted). 

You may still want to join the crowd electing a governor so he can ban a book because reasons, but this is yet another time in the world of education where it would be more useful to talk about what is actually happening in schools instead of trying to sow, water and fertilize seeds of panic.

What Can Schools Learn From Learning Pods

This is not hard. Really. Not hard at all.

But Lisa Chu somehow dances around it. She's writing for the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), an advocacy group for charter-flavored ed reform. Founded by Paul Hill and now headed by Robin Lake, who was heavily invested in the push for Washington state charters and who at one point rejected the mantle of reformer even as she continued to embrace reformster policies.

In other news, sun expected to rise in East tomorrow

Anyway, it may just be the CRPE way of things to scoot past an obvious lesson about public schools here.

Lu is not wrong about the power of the useful things she sees in pandemic pods, those groups of parents, students and educators who came together in small groups to get some pandemic learning done. CRPE surveyed 253 pod parents and educators (I know--that sounds awful). Over half of the teachers had previously taught in some kind of classroom (and the rest were classified as teachers because...?)

In interviews, parents and teachers said the combination of small group sizes and flexibility to shape the learning experience enabled educators to form strong relationships with their students and ensure students felt seen, known, and heard, which, in turn, helped them support students’ learning and well-being.

Learning was more based on student interests. The teacher-student relationships were stronger; trust was greater. Deeper connections led to social and emotional development. Better communication skills. 

Here's the list of lessons Chu offers:

Parents and community organizations know the students' needs best.

Students form strong relationships outside of core classes, like in band or sports. Schools ought to figure out how to do that in core classes. 

Measure students feelings about safety and belonging to tell how you're doing.

Overall--shape the learning environment around student needs rather than "assumptions about how the school day should look."

Now, these are mostly correct (some day we'll talk about how to make English class like band). And at a couple of points, Chu acknowledges what makes these easier in pods, but somehow never adds this simple conclusion to her list:

Smaller class sizes are better. All these magical things, like students building relationships instead of getting lost in a crowd, depend on small class sizes. All of them. The key to every lesson here is to reduce class size so that all of these things can more easily happen. Teachers have more time to address and be guided by the interests and needs of students. Relationships and trust are built. 

There is another lesson here--something about parents who can afford to hire a teacher and provide necessary supplies. But the big lesson from learning pods? Smaller is better. 

Betsy DeVos Plays The Hits (NAEP Edition)

Before Betsy DeVos was Secretary of Education, she was a relentless, wealthy privatization advocate, and there was never any chance that she would walk away from her old job once she was done with the new one. It's just that now she can put that "former secretary" in front of her name.

So it should come as zero surprise that she turned up last week sharing an op-ed on Fox News, joining in that popular Edu-genre, the "Oh Nos! The NAEP Scores!!" essay. Which shows some bravery on her part, because actually the cries of anguish have been relatively subdued this year, even though the NAEP (The Nation's Report Card) produced some nearly-newsworthy results this year.

DeVos gets her licks in at "learning losses during the pandemic caused by the unnecessary, union-driven school lockdowns" (pretty sure somebody missed a comma--I don't think she meant to blame the actual pandemic on teachers unions), but that's not what she's here for. She here for the that shows some NAEP score drops before the pandemic pause actually hit.

Math scores, says DeVos, for the lowest 10% of thirteen year olds dropped by 13 points. Reading scores for the lowest 10%  of nine year olds dropped by 7 points. She's a little fuzzy on the "since when" part of this, but since she brings up 2012, the last year with figures for the Long Term Trend assessment has figures for. Her reporting does not exactly match NAEP's own reporting; they show smaller drops over that period. But everyone agrees that it's the first time the scores have ever dipped. Mostly NAEP scores of the various shapes, sizes and periods, have stayed stagnant.

But DeVos is alarmed. These results are "abysmal."

However, she wants you to know that this is not because of a lack of spending, which is what "the education establishment would have you believe." No, the US spends so much money on education. It has nearly tripled since the 1960s (when Betsy and I were in elementary school). She says we spend 35% more per pupil than every other major developed nation, which is not what her link to the NCES says-- they say that the US spends 37% more than the average of OECD countries, which is just sloppy. 

And by the way, DeVos wants you to know that the Department of Education was established as "a pay-off from then-President Jimmy Carter to the teachers union bosses who funded his campaign." And since they were founded, the US has spent $1 trillion trying to "close the gap." I'm assuming she's talking Title I money, which was not spent to close a gap but to help lift up those at the bottom. Not the same thing. Closing the gap would be trying to get hungry folks the same food that rich people are eating; lifting them up would mean they don't go hungry. "Closing the gap" is an admirable goal, but almost impossible to attain unless you make rich folks sit on their hands. But I digress. $1 trillion.

But all that money hasn't "moved the needle when it comes to results," and like many good classic reformsters, DeVos will just skip over the part where we establish why we should use a standardized test of math and reading as a needle, and what exactly the consequences of not moving that needle might be. 

But she knows how to move that needle. 

The one and only thing that has continually demonstrated an ability to improve student achievement is school choice. A recent University of Arkansas analysis of data from the Nation’s Report Card found that students in states with the greatest level of education freedom recorded higher achievement levels. 

The research that she links to is a bit of a hash, and her whole argument confuses causation and correlation, and she really fuzzes up the difference between a real gain and a percentage gain-- generally speaking, DeVos cannot be trusted when she starts throwing numbers around. But she smells public school blood, so she's determined to hit every point on the greatest hits list.

You might think another sobering Nation’s Report Card might force the education establishment and the union bosses to implement ideas to improve literacy and numeracy. But, of course, they’re not.

Instead, they’re spending their time defending critical race theory-infused teaching and calling the FBI on parents who voice opposition to their children being indoctrinated.

I do wonder who the "education establishment" might be, but you know-- evil indoctrinators, etc etc. And just to round things out, here comes the same old quote from A Nation at Risk, a work that warned we were on the brink of a national collapse because of education, and we've now been waiting for that collapse, any day now, for forty years. 

Look, anybody can play correlation and causation games with the NAEP numbers. What has happened since 2012 that might account for a drop? Well, we've filled schools with the first generation to grow up under Common Core and test-centered education. The test that gave us these "abysmal" numbers was taken on DeVos's watch at education.

A serious person in the reform biz would look at those numbers and say (or at least think), "Gee, we've been implementing lots of our policies and they don't seem to have helped." But Betsy DeVos has never been a serious person, and her absolute certainty that public education must be swept away and replaced by a free market system in which people can rise or fall as they deserve limits the scope of her vision. As little respect as I have for standardized testing as a measure of educational effectiveness, it may well be that there is something to find in these NAEP results, but DeVos is certainly not the person to go looking.