Tuesday's Bitter Anniversary

I've seen precious little about it, even though the anniversary is coming up tomorrow. I'd like to think that it's something practical, like it's only a nine year anniversary, or we're distracted by all our other issues. I'm sure we'll see a bunch of pieces tomorrow, and for one day some folks will pretend to care.

I'm writing this on Monday, December 13. Tomorrow is the ninth anniversary of the Sandy Hook murders.

Twenty-six people died, twenty of them children. Tomorrow we'll see various outlets trot out retrospective stories, some with pictures, some with graphic descriptions of the terror and horror of those peoples' final moments. It will be a writing challenge, to try to stir up feelings about the killings, to find a nerve to press down that hasn't already been pressed.

Because tomorrow we really mark two anniversaries. One is the anniversary of one of the nation's most horrific mass murders, a school shooting that literally outstrips the mind's ability to grasp fully. The other is the anniversary of learning something about ourselves as a nation.

Sandy Hook stands out among all our many various mass murders in this country, all our long parade of school shootings, because Sandy Hook was the moment when it finally became clear that we are not going to do anything about this, ever. "If this is not enough to finally do something," we thought, "then nothing ever will be."

And it wasn't.

"No way to prevent this," says only Nation Where This Regularly Happens is the most bitter, repeated headline The Onion has ever published. We're just "helpless."

Look, I don't know that draconian gun control would work, though I know that the few-years ban on assault weapons did (don't message me with your objections to the term "assault weapon"). I can't pretend to have an answer to this persistent and complicated problem. But I'm sure "thoughts and prayers" aren't doing jack or squat. I'm sure that legislators trying to come up with any kind of "solution" that directs attention away from guns isn't it. Whatever. 

We've made it very clear as a country that we aren't going to do anything about it, that we're going to pretend that even though we have gun violence and death on a scale unparalleled by any other nation on earth, it's just not really a problem and there's not really a solution. Meanwhile, "thoughts and prayers" out of one side of the mouth and "the government is coming to take your guns (so you better buy more)" even though after all these years the government still hasn't even tried to come take anybody's guns.

But Sandy Hook made it clear. Each new shooting would be greeted by a little theater, some somber shadow plays, some depressing statistics, make some stupid proposals (let's arm teachers!)and then we'd move on and not do a damned thing. Just put students through god-awful active shooter drills and add "maybe take bullets for children" to teacher job description.

If you ask me to lay out a perfect solution, I can't. But I know that the solution is not to do nothing but shrug and say, "Oh, well. That's how it is"-- something we've never adopted as a solution for anything else, ever, in this country.

Sandy Hook is when we knew, when we finally understood. This is how we. as a nation, want to live.

So tomorrow, feel that bitterness and anger, and also set aside a moment for remembering that to those families, the anniversary is not that of a bitter turning point for us as a nation, but a very painful and wrenching and specific anniversary for a wrenching and specific loss. I'm going to wrap this up with something my sister posted today:

It's 9 years now.

 
They were in their last 24 hours on this planet. Thoughts and prayers, fundraisers, marches, petitions, celebrities, anger, outrage, apathy; churches declaring it not their problem, gun owners defying common decency, government being cowards,mentalhealthcare availability, safety drills, fancy door locks, security officers....those didn't stop it, neither did the bravery of the staff literally stepping in front of a gunman, teachers pulling students out of hallways, barricading doors with file cabinets, the custodian running room to room to warn....They hid in closets, bathrooms, under desks, in the dark. And 26 of them died there. Don't look away.

 
Our country turned a dark and dangerous corner when none of this created any change. The children would be learning to drive, going to junior proms. The building was razed when insane people wouldn't stop coming to see it, and the survivors were too frightened to return to it. First responders were in therapy for years, some of the children were literally shot to pieces. Don't look away.

 
I know it's hard to hear, hard to dwell on, hard to think about how we've failed. But it is the very, very least they deserve. The ones who didn't come home, and the ones that carry on as best they can. The families with a hole the size of a small child. The ones in other schools, wondering if they are next. They deserve our attention tomorrow. Don't look away.

 
Remembering Sandy Hook.

ICYMI: Quick Summer Day Edition (12/12)

 It was beautiful but blustery here yesterday, the gentler end of that front that wrought such havoc out west. My county has been on the receiving end of killer tornados, and it's an awful thing, that mixture of destruction and death and the reminder that we are tiny creatures on the surface of a giant globe that we can't actually control. Maybe that's one reason we spend so much time fighting about other stuff.

At any rate, here's some reading for the week, beginning with a bang and ending with Britney.

The Supreme Court's new religious liberty case could destroy public education

Slate looks at the case currently working its way through SCOTUS, and how it will probably mean very bad news for public education

To reduce inequality in our education system, reduce class sizes 

This week Friend of the Institute Leonie Haimson went off on a press conference in NYC. Here's the written out version of her argument form The Nation. It is the one reform that we know works, and yet somehow, it's the one education "leaders" never seem to want to implement.

What should parents be worried about? The books their children don't read.

Anne Lutz Fernandez points out that if you are worried about indoctrination and brainwashing of your children, maybe think about how little they actually read, and the time they spend on their devices.

DeVos family among top DeSantis re-election PAC supporters

Because of course they are.

In Texas, a battle over what books can be taught and what books can be read

Michael Powell at the New York Times with a deep dive into the sides of the Texas-based move to control curriculum and gag teachers.

Bloomberg's charter push: big money and bigger political peril

Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat takes a look at Bloomberg's plan to throw money at charters.

The problem(s) with Bloomberg's $750 million investment in charter schools

At the Washington Post, Carol Burris and Diane Ravitch lay into Bloomberg's big money attempt to take charge of education.

When your job interferes with your work

John Warner at Inside Higher Ed talking about college teaching, but every other teacher who ever said "I love teaching the kids, but the rest of this job is killing me" will recognize exactly what he's talking about.

The GOP has revived its obsession with parents' rights

Jennifer Berkshire at The New Republic with a stroll down memory lane to the 90s, when the GOP thought it had a winning political issue with parents' rights. (Spoiler alert: it looks great until voters see the fine print).

"We are here" Debates over teaching history exclude Native people

From the LA School Report (and yes, in partnership with The 74) a look at some Indigenous parents pointing out that the "how to teach history" debates are leaving someone out.

What's one more deadly school shooting when the real danger to kids is a book?

From the Miami Herald, a pretty blunt assessment from Leonard Pitts, Jr.

Tennessee's kids should be taught the truth about our history

Betsy Phillips in Nashville Scene has some thoughts about the work of the group she calls "Moms for Lying to Kids" 

"A dog whistle and a lie" Black parents on the critical race theory debate

From the parenting column at the Washington Post, a missing perspective in the great crt panic

Empty pedagogy, behaviorism, and the rejection of equity

There's a lot to read here, and a lot to take in (framed by Doug Lemov and his teach like a champion shtick, but it's a great article for pinpointing just what feels so very wrong with technique-focused educationeers like Lemov

Bring back homerooms

Nancy Bailey with a simple solution--use home rooms in school. It's true. We had them on and off for years at my school, used because they made a great "base camp" for students, and repeatedly discontinued because they weren't instructional time. She's got a point here.

New Hampshire is trying to protect itself from subversive doctrine

Charles Pierce at Esquire rips into New Hampshire's descent into suppression of certain Naughty Things

Why we need to address scam culture

Tressie McMillan Cottom is the bomb (if you don't follow her on the twitter, you should fix that). This NYT piece about scam culture is not directly about education, but you'll certainly recognize features.

Texas substitute teacher who brought karaoke machine to class asked to leave

The story we need. A sub who screwed up, but not horrifically. An administration that reacted with restraint (and a bit of wit). And the video is included.

Jeb Bush Has A New Education Master Plan For 2022

I'll give Jeb! this--when education policy failed to carry him to the White House, he didn't just turn tail and pretend that he's never met the whole thing ever before (that was Common Core he disowned). And his policy right-tilted thinky tank is still at it, currently under the name Foundation for Excellence in Education, aka ExcelinEd.

In fact, the group has a whole new education policy playbook for 2022. And it looks very... familiar.

"States are the incubators of innovation," says the tiny head of Jeb. "With a relentless focus on advancing big and bold policies, governors and state leaders can prioritize students and transform education to give our next generation of citizens the very brightest of futures." There is no mention of the bright present of a previous generation of Florida students, who have been well-soaked in Jeb's big bold ideas.

So what are these ideas. There are five big, bold headings.

Close learning gaps.

The bullet points include "ensure every child can read by the end of 3rd grade," which is not a terrible goal, but experience tells us that reformsters don't really understand what it means and tend to seek "remedies" like holding students back who don't pass the state reading test. This does not work, for many reasons, and it ignores that the third grade reading success to later life success link is correlation, not causation.

EIE also wants to "assess learning every year" and "hold schools accountable for student outcomes" which means using punitive measures tied to Big Standardized Test scores, a policy we've been pursuing for at least two decades, with zero success. :et parents and educators know "about student progress" as if nobody has ever done that. 

There are two bizarre items on the list. One is "equitably distribute high performing teachers," which has, again, been part of federal ed policy for a long time, only nobody can figure out how to do it. Assuming that you can identify high-performing teachers (you can't), exactly how do you redistribute them? Grab them on their way home from school, tie them up, and toss them ion a van? It's also emblematic of EIE's deep and profound lack of understanding education that they imagine a teacher who is effective in School A would automatically also be effective in Schools B through Z.

Finally, "distribute funding equitably across all public schools," which is a hoot coming from reformsters based in Florida, a state that perfected the art of segregated school funding. Though if I were a betting man, I'd bet that what they actually mean here is "We think charter schools are public schools, too, and while we used to claim that they could do more with less, we would now like to get a bigger slice of that big educational taxpayer money pie."

It's worth noting that there's no particular reason to think that any of these measures would close the "learning gaps," nor can I say hard enough that these all represent old, moldy policies.

Bridge the digital divide.

There's one good bullet point here-- provide devices and internet connections for "underserved" students. The rest is really another goal entirely.

High quality instruction and curriculum through online platforms. Develop online services for special ed, ELL, and SEL. Establish technology and instructional education accounts for families. So it's all about virtual schooling (a proven failure) ties to education savings accounts, aka super-vouchers.

Empower families with opportunity.

Well, you know where this is headed. Offer choice of any district in the state. Grow more charter schools "that are equitably funded" (told you). Let ed dollars follow the student. "Level the playing field" for special needs and low-income students via ESAs. Unbundle education at the course level. 

So the complete dismantling of public education, while using a voucher system to abandon parents. Yes, I know it says "empower," but what a voucher/esa system actually does is say to parents, "We gave you some money--now you're on your own. Good luck in the education free market."

Strengthen pathways to college and career.

The short form here is "turn education into simple job training" while promising that it will be training for Really Good Jobs. EIE also wants to "blur the lines" between high school and post-secondary ed (because market expansion).

Oh, and they want to collect a ton of data, right in line with what Jeb's other super-group, the Chiefs for Change, has proposed. Collect all their school data, and also all their life-after-school data--just to be sure the program's working, you understand.

Reimagine learning.

Credits for life experience. Personalize learning. Microschools. Learning pods. Old standards, particularly for the Put Your Personal Identity On A Blockchain crowd, most horrifyingly captured by The Ledger. 

There's also "fund education based on the value of learning" and "rethink traditional hiring practices and allow teachers to bring school to students," neither of which is explained in the fine print of the "report." 

There are more pages delving into these bullet points in greater detail, but none of it provides actual real support for this vision, which is the same vision this branch of reformsterdom has always pushed--not just quite so explicitly:

Replace public education with a free market system. Parents get a voucher/esa and a hearty wish of good luck. They then get to navigate a marketplace of many, many education-flavored products, which are largely unregulated but which are also, through some mysterious market process, high quality (you know--like the market has pushed Wal-mart and McDonald's to be strictly high quality). 

This is what Jeb! and his crew want to push next year. It's what they've been pushing for years, but like many folks, they smell covid-created weakness and think maybe this could be the year they finally kill off public education in this country. Stay alert. 

Are Parents' Rights The Only Ones We Need To Worry About?

Being a parent is a scary business. Suddenly you've got these tiny humans to take care of and you don't know what you're doing and you try to make the best choices you can even though you're worried that you may be scarring them for life but you invest your heart and soul into trying to keep them safe and smart and growing up to be good people. And then just as they're starting to turn into real people and you're even starting to feel like you're getting a handle on things, you reach a point where you have to start handing their care and safety over to other people--people you don't even know--and you discover whole new levels of fear and anxiety. 

All of this is real. It's important to remember that. It's important to remember that no matter how many times the concern is exploited by charlatans and opportunistic demagogues, the concern is real. 

Parents rights is a hot political ticket right now, and like the best political opportunities, it has some basis in reality. Parents do, and should, have rights when it comes to their children. 

But--and this is a huge, important but-- any system that recognizes and supports parental rights must also recognize and protect the rights of children.

Right wing folks are fond of saying, "My child does not belong to the government" That's true. Your child is a human being. They don't belong to the government or the school or you--they belong to themselves. And because they lack the power and agency to fully protect their own rights, they need a champion, a person with power and agency to stand in their corner.

Ideally, that person would be a parent. But any responsible system has to recognize the reality that there exists a non-zero of bad parents out there. Some of them are spectacularly bad (like the parents who held their twelve kids captive); some of them even make news. 

Every teacher has stories. Kid thrown out of the house after a big argument with his dad about sharing drugs. Kid's drunken mom tries to purposefully run them down with the family car. Girl's dad punishes her by shaving her head; sends her to school with instructions to the school not to let her try to hide it with a hat. Kid falls asleep because Dad spends the utility money on beer, so there's no heat at home and it's hard to sleep. Kid's father leaves town to start life in new town with new wife and baby, and tells kid not to bother trying to visit because he's got a new life now.

This is over and above the more pedestrian stuff, like the parent who sits in a parent-teacher conference and berates the child for being stupid and lazy "like always." The parent who is never home. 

To be clear, these parents are not even close to the majority of parents. But I don't think you can find a school anywhere, regardless of race, wealth, or any other demographic marker, that does not have a few of these stories every single year. 

So any time you start talking to me about upholding parents rights, I will want to hear about how your "solution" will involve protecting the rights of young humans--not just from the school, but from their peers and their own parents. I don't want distrust of parents to be the default any more than I think distrust of teachers or schools should be the default--but there must be mechanisms in place to protect students rights when they are threatened and that must take precedent over parental rights.

If talking about parents rights, we also need to discuss rights of other stakeholders. Some parent "rights" cannot be honored without damage to society. Those parents who believe they have a "right" to raise their white children in a segregated environment. Parents who believe they have a right to place their child in a school where Those People's Children are not allowed to attend. Now we get into a different conversation, a conversation not about whether parents have the right to make that choice, but whether or not taxpayers have an obligation to fund it. Do parents have the right to make choices that are bad for society--and do they have the right to have society pay for those choices?

It is easy to demand that parents be in control of their child's education, that you shouldn't have to co-parent with the government--which is just another way that you should be allowed to make your own way and that your child should be totally dependent on your capabilities as a parent--when you are confident that you personally have the resources to navigate that challenge. Not everyone does, and a non-zero number of parents are not even trying under the current system, even with all its built-in supports and assistance. 

Parents must be partners with the schools that educate their children--but when they are incapable or unwilling to hold up their half of the partnership, schools need to step in. Parents' rights are important--but when they clash with the rights of the child, the child's rights must take precedence. Waving the parents right banner is swell for politics (must be, because it keeps coming back time and time again as a cover for other activities), but it's not a great way to put students first in education.

Education Is Not A Market Good, Episode 564,221

 A fun story from Tik Tok via Daily Dot, and which has been bouncing around for a while, showing once again how the free market actually works.

The clip is from a Door Dasher, and it shows a wall's worth of bags at McDonalds, waiting for someone to Door Dash them to the person ordering. They are sitting and languishing because the customer did not attach any kind of tip to them and Door Dash pays diddly. 

This is a lesson for every DeVos-style "education should be a Uber" person out there--if you make a good or service an item on the free market AND you also set up that good or service to be provided by gig workers, what you've basically a bidding system in which said goods/services go only to those who are willing to win the bid. That system will also set a low bar, a "this is not enough money to bother with" bar, below which you will find phenomenon like a wall full of cold Bic Macs.

So let's say that we go to an voucher/esa system, in which the state says, "You're on your own parents-- go buy your kid some education." Who wins the bidding war for education services-- the parents who have just the voucher money to spend, or the parents in a position to sweeten the pot? Where will the market set the inevitable "this customer won't make me enough money to bother with" bar? And what can be done for the people on the low side of that bar? Well, maybe there will be a public system limping along that they can go back to. 

The free market picks winners and losers, both among vendors and among customers. The sad Micky D's wall is a reminder of that.

Dear Teacher Near The End Of Your Rope:

It's not you.

You may be thinking that it's you, that if you were better, stronger, a more gifted teacher, a more resilient human being, somehow this year would not be feeling like an uphill slog against a downhill landslide. You may be thinking that somehow you're missing something, failing to catch something, just not getting your best foot forward. 

It's not you.

First of all, I can guarantee you it's not just you. I spend a chunk of my days reading education writing from all across the country and the "I can't do this any more" teacher is currently a thriving genre--and it's just the tip of the iceberg. So you are not somehow weaker than all the other cool teachers who are just sailing through this sea of shit.

Second of all, the list of things you didn't sign up for is now longer than the drive-through line at your local understaffed fast food joint. You didn't sign up to teach next to people who don't take the pandemic seriously or surrounded by the children of people who don't take the pandemic seriously. You did not sign up to be regularly vilified for teaching that thing about race that some folks can't explain but they're pretty sure your commie butt is indoctrinating their children with it every day. You didn't sign up to be jerked back and forth by incomplete and rapidly shifting responses to that pandemic that mostly result in half-assed measures that are not remotely reassuring. You did not sign up to be the default villain in whatever tale of woe is a headline today. (To be fair, unless you've been in the classroom for over twenty-some years, you did actually sign up to teach in a country where attempts to murder your students and you are considered the price of freedom, and while they are actually numerically rare, that possibility always hangs over your head--but none of that, unfortunately, is news.) And of course, you can't take a day off without feeling guilty about all the coverage your colleagues have to do because you're not there.

In educationland it is raining, pouring, drenching tubs of water and sleet and hail, and the administrators who are supposed to be putting a roof over your head are either too swamped by the gaping holes in their own roofs, or they're handing you cute little pep talk tissue umbrellas, or reminding you to go build your own self-care roof, or they aren't even trying (there are some out there getting the job done, and you can tell it immediately by how much less stress their teachers are carrying). Meanwhile, too many other people who ought to build the roof over the school, like legislators and leaders and even parents, are heaving buckets of water at you. And the folks who are rooting for public education to fail, to be smashed apart out of visceral hatred or a desire to sell off the parts or a dream of not having to pay taxes to educate Those People--all of those folks are emboldened by the storm and have set their firehoses to full. 

You already know a lot of this, but you don't dare to breathe a word of it because you know that you'll just be branded a whiner. That and perhaps the gnawing feeling that it really is your fault that you feel soaked to the bone. Maybe you're imagining it. Maybe it's not so bad.

You're not imagining it.

I'm in no position to tell you whether it's time to get out or not--only you know what you can take. I can say this: I am sure that whatever divine spark, whatever ability tempered by experience and sharpened skills, that lifted you through the classroom in better days is still there. It may be gasping for air, but I believe it's still there, mostly because everything that's making it hard to feel that teacher spark at the bone is a big collection of things that are Not Teaching. And I believe that the pendulum always swings, and that there is another side of All This, and at some point we will come out there and we may find ourselves in a place that doesn't look like the Before Times, but that place will still need schools and teachers. Bottom line--this right now is not forever. I hope you don't quit. But, as I said, only you know how much is too much.

Right now, and on the other side, there will be students who need you, who will benefit from your presence (my twins will be among them). I say this not to guilt you, but to assure you that while you may feel as if you're shoveling jello with a pitchfork, your efforts are not wasted. You are not doing this for nothing. Sometimes it takes all your effort and energy just to keep from moving backwards, but holding that line, or even reducing the amount of ground you give up--that's not nothing. Only you can decide if it's enough, but it's not nothing.

I hope the people who love you are holding you up. I hope the holiday break is helpful. I'm not here to offer advice today. Just to confirm that it's not you.

Can You Beat The Virtual Proctor?

Distance learning ushered in huge market opportunities for virtual proctoring businesses. These offered a method of watching students take on-line tests and making sure they don't cheat. It sems like an elegant solution--except that the programs stink. 

Take Proctorio, one of the big names in student test surveillance. They impose requirements that are a burden on poorer students, and their "machine learning and advanced facial detection technologies" work badly enough to cause student uprisings. And they play hardball; after trying to squelch a student twitter beef against them, they sued an instructor for posting videos about the company even though the videos were available on youtube.

Virtual monitoring has been one more example of not-ready-for-primetime AI, creating numerous problems for the students who are often forced to use it, from privacy violations to triggering cheating alerts for minor behavior like looking away from the camera (and heaven help the student who needs to pee while taking the test). Also, as is not unusual with facial recognition software, it dopesn't always do well with Black faces. It has been an unholy mess. 

If you want to have the experience, YR Media, a "national networ4k of young journalists and artists" has whipped up Surveillance U, a virtual proctor simulator, plus an assortment of demonstrations of how a virtual student can be nailed for cheating. You can give it a try (spoiler alert--you're a cheater) and see some of what students have been complaining about. 

There's no doubt that one of the challenges of distance learning is distance cheating. But it continues to be clear that virtual proctoring is not the answer.