"Don't Say Gay," shame, and the Law of Unintended Consequences

It appears as a parenthetical comment in a CNN opinion piece by Jill Filipovic and then amplified in an Amanda Marcotte piece at Salon. It's one more reason that the Don't Say Gay bill in Florida is doomed. Look at the heart of the language again:

Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.

As Filipovic points out, heterosexuality is a sexual orientation, and male and female are gender identities.

This law is so vague and badly written, that it outlaws any classroom materials that refer to boys and girls, or that talks about traditional hetero romance. So, every fairy tale would be ruled out. Every reference to boys and girls would be verbotten. And we'd have to do something about those gendered bathrooms. As Marcotte puts it:

In other words, if we read the law literally, it would create the kind of gender-less dystopia that conservatives are always claiming liberals want, where any acknowledgment of maleness or femaleness is erased entirely.

Because gender and sexual identity are baked into most of the experiences we subject littles to. As a well-circulated meme says, folks may be freaking out over LGBTQ for littles, but they'll still ask your toddler son if he has a girlfriend and buy your toddler daughter a "Heartbreaker" onesie. 

The answer from proponents of LGBTQ suppression would, I'm betting, be something along the lines of "Tradition roles and identities are normal, and therefor discussing them with littles is age-appropriate," which dovetails with the old notion that LGBTQ persons are not born, but made--or, for the most paranoid, recruited. 

At least part of the impetus here is anger that LGBTQ persons won't demonstrate any shame over their orientation. "Don't Say Gay" echoes that old nomenclature "The love that dare not speak its name." 

The desire to shame and silence has begun to crop up in ways that would be merely silly if they weren't so damaging. The Mississippi assistant principal fired because he read second graders I Need a New Butt may be the result of localized foolishness, but as Alyssa Rosenberg shows in her Washington Post column, it opens a window on how adults forget to appreciate the value of "gross, rude, and absurd" in children's books and lives. Children have a great deal of exploring to do when it comes to themselves. I have often repeated my belief that education should be the business of helping young humans to become more fully their best selves, to grasp what it means to be fully human in the world.

Delivering to children a message that they should feel shame for having butts would not be a useful tool in helping them grow.

But when you unleash shame in a sort of omni-directional vagueness, there's no predicting where it will land. You come up with bad laws that say "Don't talk about X" when you really mean "Don't talk about X in the wrong, abnormal way." It's one more way of saying "We're not actually against indoctrinatin' kids as long as it's done the right way." This law is like a flipped version of all those times conservatives called for freedom of religion and then got upset with Muslims, Pastafarians, and followers of the Church of Satan exercised it.

And there you are, punching yourself in the face. Here's hoping that when DeSantis signs this bill, as he almost certainly will, it goes straight to the courts, where it is struck down as it so richly deserves to be. 

Do Students Know When They're Learning?

 A pair of experiments at Harvard suggest that students may not be the best judges of how well they're learning. 

A pair of professors split up their introductory physics classes. One half got lectures, and one half got active learning. Then they switched. The professors have a 12 item quiz to measure learning, and also asked students to assess the two types of learning they experienced. The students get better  results after they had done the active learning. But-- they lecture students more strongly agreed with statements like "I feel like I learned a great deal from this lecture" and "I wish all my physics courses were taught this way."

The two professors repeated the experiment the following semester, and found the same results.

There are plenty of caveats here. Harvard freshmen are not exactly a random, representative sampling of students, and a 12 item quiz is not exactly a deep measure of learning. Nor is physics a sample of all kinds of learning content. 

But it reminded me of a story from my teaching day. I taught downstream from one of my colleagues, getting most of my students from her every year. Invariably, when I asked them about their previous English class, they would disparage it (and her) by saying the class was just a lot of fun and games and they never actually learned anything. But then, at the start of every new unit, I'd do formal or informal assessment to see what they already knew. The answer was usually quite a bit.

"Where do you suppose you learned all that," I would ask them, and the light bulb would slowly go on. It took them literally 6-12 months to understand what they had actually learned. 

This phenomenon has several implications for teachers. I think one of the biggest centers on the issue of confidence. 

Part of what a teacher is doing in a classroom is building student confidence, helping them believe that they have the skills and knowledge to handle what comes at them. But it is easy to build confidence that is not rooted in reality, so one of the skills teachers have to foster is the ability to realistically self-assess. 

This kind of self-assessment looks different in different disciplines. A music student has to learn to really listen to both herself and the rest of the ensemble. An artist has to learn to really look at what they're rendering. A writer has to learn to really see what she's written. This is what teacher feedback is about--not just telling the student how she's doing, but giving her the chance to check her own perceptions against those of someone who, ideally, is more expert. 

I've seen plenty of folks in leadership roles pump students up in artificial ways that lead further down the road to crashing and burning. I've seen students blossom early and stall out because they were pumped up with praise. "You are great for an 8th grader," is no help when you're a tenth grader. 

This is one of the big challenges of teaching--to render yourself obsolete for a student who has learned to measure their own growth and skill. And it is a tricky part, to find the line between discouraging truths and overly-positive praise. If you're going to be a life long learner, you have to be able to gauge your own learning accurately. You don't have to look hard to find adults who never learned this lesson. Add it to the list of things they never told you about the job in teacher school.

TikTokker Trolls Pearson

Right up front, let me note that A) cybersquatting is illegal and B) TikTok is probably some kind of evil surveillance tool for the Chinese.

That said, this is kind of special.

As of today, a TikTokker is in her eighth day of holding the username @pearsoneducation hostage. 

It is safe to say that this user has not been using TikTok for philosophical or deeply artistic pursuits. Here are some of the posts from this siege, mostly posted over serious party activities.

Day 1 of holding Pearson's username hostage. Willing to return for cash. Negotiable. Honestly a kind gesture of me after all the money I spent on all the terible textbooks.

Day 3 of holding this username hostage from a trash textbook company that left a bunch of 18-22 year olds unable to afford to eat.

Day 5 of holding this username hostage and I'm still not convinced that Pearson MyLab wasn't invented in h3ll by demons and fueled by the tears of sleep deprived children.

Day 7 of holding this account hostage. Pearson is still trash. I challenge McGraw-Hill to a beer pong tournament. Get @ me bro.

The account has 9647 follower and some of her hostage posts have hundreds of thousands of likes. If she's doing this for attention, she's getting a bunch. No indication that Pearson has paid the slightest attention to her. They do pride themselves on their ability to swim in the digital ocean, but I don't know if that includes TikTok. The comments on her posts indicate a huge amount of deep-seated anger about Pearson book prices, and a pretty huge number of people angry about jumping through costly certification hoops for the company. 

The account holder has done this before, previously trolling the Oaks Christian School, which now appears to have its account back. 

Hard to imagine how this might play out. It seems like small potatoes, but then, this is the company that tracked down high school students to threaten them for breaking test security, so who knows. In the meantime, if you want to work off some Pearson anger vicariously, you can (for now) check out the account here. 

How PA Charter Schools Stack Up (Spoiler Alert: Not Well)

 In  January, the PA Charter Performance Center of Children First released a new report entitled "The PA Disconnect in Cyber Charter Oversight and Funding." The report packs lots of illuminating details into a slim package, showing not just the facts and figures on Pennsylvania's charter schools, but putting them in the context of what the other cyber schooling states are doing these days.

Regular observers of Pennsylvania's wide-open cyber charter schools will not be surprised by anything here, but it's a clear, calm and balanced picture of the commonwealth's dysfunctional cyber sector. It's important to look at because, as the report notes, Pennsylvania last year led the nation in students enrolled in cyber charters. Throwing that in on top of our already-messed-up school funding system, and you get all sorts of issues. Especially since Pennsylvania's cyber charter laws were drafted in 2002 and have never been revisited or revised.

Here are some highlights from the report.

Charter fans have been talking about the great charter growth during the pandemic. In Pennsylvania, of the great jump to charters, 99.7% of that was students jumping to cyber charters. That growth far outpaced growth in any other state. 

Most states fund cyber schools at the state level, unlike Pennsylvania, where the cybers are funded at the local level. That means that local school districts absorb the cost directly, giving them a choice between either raising property taxes or cutting programs. 

Cyber tuition is based on the local sending district's per pupil costs. In PA, the state puts a small (36%-ish) amount toward school funding, meaning that local districts pick up the rest of the tab locally, to whatever extent they are able. PA's wildly unequal spending means that this is a highly variable figure--per student tuition can range from $9K to $23K for regular students and $18K to $57K for special education students. This means that taxpayers in different districts pay vastly different tuition fees for local students who go cyber; it also means that districts who provide more of their school funding locally will take a bigger local tax hit from cybers. Also, as cyber payments are figured into district funding formulas in subsequent years, the cyber tuition costs automatically go up.

PA used to have a formula for reimbursing districts for a portion of cyber costs. That rule was phased out in 2012 (part of Gov. Tom Corbett's slashing of education funding, which helped earn him his nickname "Old One Term"). Cybers get the same payment as bricks and mortar charter schools, even though they are way less expensive to operate. 

Cybers in PA took in about $980 million last year. The report points out that this is more than three times the amount by which Harrisburg increased basic ed funding this year.

There are fully virtual charters operating in 27 states (with West Virginia coming on board shortly). Not one of them does cyber funding as Pennsylvania does. 

Twenty-one states fund cybers directly. Three other fund via school districts; all three (Illinois, Oregon and Wisconsin) require cybers to be authorized by local districts, unlike PA, which authorizes charters on the state level. In Wisconsin, cybers have to negotiate payment in their contract with the local district.

Many other cyber-states pay cybers less than they pay brick and mortar charters. Some have other creative arrangements. A couple fund cybers based on performance. One performance based method is to pay cybers based on course completion. Texas requires full-time students to complete four full years (eight semester courses) to get the cyber paid. New Hampshire uses a mastery approach; their single state chartered virtual school was created in 2007, and it pays based on the number of mastery milestones that are hit by students. 

A performance-based system would be bad news for PA cyber schools; none of the fourteen schools have ever hit the state proficiency requirements, and some are spectacularly bad. Looking just at 2018-2019, we find that none of the schools beat the state average of 62.1% proficient for English or 45.2% for Math. A couple were almost in the neighborhood, but some--well. Agora Cyber was 34% English, 10.6% Math. Insight PA Cyber was 28.5% English, 7.6% Math. And Commonwealth Charter Academy, the 800 pound gorilla of PA cybers, the business that spent $19 million for advertising over just two years-- their scores show 5% English, and 13.5% Math. 

The report notes that state level cyber charters are created by state agencies are created by state legislation or a state-level agency, and therefor accountable to them. Pennsylvania's charter are okayed by the state, then created by businesses and accountable to the business owners. But accountability remains a huge problem for Pennsylvania taxpayers when it comes to charters.

As the report notes, PA is not the only state to face accountability issues. But other states have adapted. In Ohio, the ECOT scandal, in which the major cyber school in the state was found to have lied about enrollment to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, the legislature has tightened up rules. Indiana also had a major scandal (which they found because they require annual audits), and the legislature passed some reforms to tighten the rules. California's huge A3 scandal has led to a moratorium on new cybers, now in place until 2025.

However, in PA, the ScrantonTimes Tribune last year ran a story revealing that six of the 14 cybers have never been reviewed by state auditors, and some only audited once, long ago--Commonwealth Charter Academy's most recent audit was conducted in 2012. As yet the legislature has done nothing other than to oppose Governor Wolf's plan including a required annual audit for cyber schools. 

The report includes several recommendations, some of which are pretty basic common sense. Don't pay for cyber charter schools if the local district already offers virtual schooling. Create a state-level cyber as a true public good. Audit cyber schools annually. Set a tuition rate in line with actual costs of providing virtual schooling, and make it uniform across the state. Vet newly proposed charters based on quality and need.

In short, treat virtual schooling as a part of an important public education system, and not as an opportunity for some business folks to hoover up taxpayer dollars. Several superintendents ago, my boss, as he was leaving the job, offered me some advice. "Go start a cyber school," he said. "It's going to be as good as printing money." He was not wrong then. It would be nice if Pennsylvania adopted enough rules so that he would be wrong now. 

ICYMI: Lost Hour Edition (3/13)

Hard to express how little I look forward to getting the Board of Directors up at what will feel to them like an hour early. That's going to be a real party. And you've got one hour less to get through the reading for this week, including plenty about Tennessee's efforts to out-Florida Florida.

Texas students push back against book bans

The Texas Tribune covers the growth of student groups behind banned book clubs and book distribution plans. They have some things to say, including some reminders that for some students, these bans are very personal. "What about my story? Am I seen as a bad influence? Am I seen as something that should be shamed?"

Memphis students oppose bills banning "obscene" and LGBTQ books

Corinne Kennedy takes the radical step of talking to actual students, and again, they have much to say. "We do not occupy a world free from pain and tragedy. So why would our libraries be free from these?"

Billionaires, millionaires, corporate interests fuel battle over Tennessee schools

Newschannel 5 in Nashville did a pretty awesome job of laying out who's really pushing the latest Tennessee assaults on public education. 

Tennessee is about to take school privatization to an extreme

Andy Spears at The Progressive takes a thorough look at the various privatization initiatives going on in Tennessee these days. Not encouraging.

A look at the Hillsdale history curriculum and how it rewrites part of US past

Phil Williams at News Channel 5 in Nashville did some looking into the history curriculum pushed by Hillsdale, the private Christian college that Tennessee's governor is hiring to launch charter schools in the state.

PA's school funding trial comes to a close

The big funding trial in PA is wrapping up WHYY has a good summary of what has happened.

Assistant principal fired after reading children's book to class

You probably haven't missed this story, but just in case, here's the AP who was fired for reading I need a new butt

Despite stress, most teachers stay put

Matt Barnum again crunches some real numbers about the teacher exodus that may or may not be happening. 

Debunking the myth that teachers stop improving after five years

Hechinger reports on one more piece of research that proves what every actual teacher already knew. But it's nice to have the confirmation.

Panicked white people tried to ban books in the '80s, too

Fred Pincus at Talking Points Memo reminds us of one of the previous times we've been here. Back then it was Jerry Falwell and the Reganites.

Remember Ebonics?

Shane Phipps takes us back even further, to the panic over ebonics. Far right moral panic yet again. 

The Rudder Association: A deep dive into the conservative group with plans to "put the Aggie back in Aggieland."

This is an impressive piece of journalism from the Battalion, the student newspaper at Texas A & M, showing just how a bunch of alum are trying to remake the campus in their own image.

Jennifer Berkshire on Challenges to Public Education

John Warner interviews the co-author of Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door and co-host of Have You Heard. 

"A Glorified Babysitter"

Joshua Needelman takes a look at the effects of Any Warm Body substitute efforts, including his own.

MAGA Re-districting incites school litigation

Thomas Ultican with the tale of the San Dieguito School District and how oine MAGA member can disrupt an entire board.

Education Aptitude Test

Susan Ohanian offers a quiz to help you decide whether you are best suited for work in a classroom, the office of the Us Secretary of Education, or the Business Roundtable. Fun times. 

Science of Reading multiverse

Does it seem as if "Science of Reading" has multiple meanings. Paul Thomas explains the issues.

Congress just grew child poverty by 3,7 million children

Jan Resseger looks at one of the major effects of Congressional failure to pass Build Back Better

Overtesting Season Is Upon Us

Mercedes Schneider blogs about that magical time of year, and how exactly it affects classrooms.

Endurance is found

Not education at all (unless, like me, you had a copy of books about this expedition in your classroom), but pretty exciting if you have an interest in Sir Ernest Shackleton's expedition. One of the most amazing survival stories ever, with stunning photos, and now they've found the ship, almost two miles down in the Weddell Sea

And over at Forbes.com, I wrote about the Government Accounting Office's look at virtual charters--just in case you want one more data point about these beasts.

FL: Gov Appoints MAGA Q Fan To State Board of Education

It is just always something in Florida.

Gov. Ron DeSantis just appointed Esther Byrd to fill a seat on the state board of education. Byrd has a bit of a track record, as reported by Florida Politics.

Byrd's husband is Rep. Cord Byrd, who has, among other things, had an explosion of temper against Black protestors. Esther Byrd made an attempt to get onto the Neptune Beach city council, but was defeated by the incumbent 1,041 to 869. She's a former marine. And she's MAGA, offering some spirited defense of Trump, the January 6 Insurrection, and well--here's a sample of some Facebook posts:

ANTIFA and BLM can burn and loot buildings and violently attack police and citizens. But when Trump supporters peacefully protest, suddenly ‘Law and Order’ is all they can talk about! I can’t even listen to these idiots bellyaching about solving our differences without violence.

In the coming civil wars (We the People vs the Radical Left and We the People cleaning up the Republican Party), team rosters are being filled. Every elected official in DC will pick one. There are only 2 teams… With Us [or] Against Us. We the People will NOT forget!

Why do you think Facebook is throwing people in FB Jail who share information about Proud Boys? (Side note: I must really have great friends cause a whole bunch have been locked up! ) I think it’s because they’ve seen a drastic spike in searches and they are worried that people are educating themselves rather than blindly believing what MSM narrative. Anyone have a better theory?

The couple was photographed on a boat flying a QAnon flag, after which Esther Byrd posted some material supportive of QAnon (no longer available on Facebook). Both Byrd's failed to respond to calls to separate themselves from QAnon. Rep Byrd brushed off criticism of his wife: "People use hyperbole all the time."

She will join an investment banker, Rick Scott's old lawyer, a Walmart PR flack, a VP for telecom giant Charter Communications, a serial entrepreneur and pro-gun Parkland parent, and the AT&T Pres who also serves on the board for the Florida Chamber of Commerce and the James Madison Institute. So she should be right at home in the sense that it's a right-leaning group of people with no actual experience or knowledge of education. Good luck, Florida.

You Too Can Be A Wealthy Education Consultant

I know this because I have been subjected to repeated Facebook advertising from Erica Jordan-Thomas and her virtual seminar Six-Figure Educator Live: Build Your Education Consulting Business Blueprint. So I just had to look.

She leads with her story:

In 2008, I sold everything I owned and moved to Charlotte, NC to become a teacher making $33k/year.

In 2012, I became an assistant principal making $62k/year. My salary had increased but I was still drowning in debt. While I was slaying at work, I was ignoring calls from bill collectors and living paycheck to paycheck.

By 2015, I was slaying as a principal and hit my ultimate financial low. I had less than $50 in my bank account and had more than a week until I got paid...so I got a loan. After picking up the loan check, I was on my way to the bank and ran out of MFin gas. So here I was on the side of the road, with a check I didn’t even have enough gas to deposit.

And let me tell you, it had nothing to do with “poor money habits”. I created a budget and followed it religiously. But even with the strictest of budgets, I was only able to save a couple of hundred bucks a month. The progress to paying off my debt was slllooooowwwww.

That’s the point where it hit me: all the budgeting, all the “working my way up” in the school system, all of the love and care I was pouring into my students was not going to get me to a place where I could feel comfort and safety in my financial situation. I started my education consulting business in 2017. Within 8 months, I paid off all my credit card debt and established 3 months of savings.

From there she moves to the pitch, which boils down to "You deserve more," which, like all good pitches, carries some weight because it's somewhat true. You won't make six figures teaching, she says, and you won't get financially fit by skipping Starbucks. This isn't the Peace Corps, she says-- teaching isn't charity work. You shouldn't be heating up Ramen noodles for lunch. "You didn't become an educator to live paycheck to paycheck." And "if anybody deserves wealth, it's you. And "if you have the power to transform the life of a student, you have the power to transform your own." This is a powerful pitch.

Dr. EJT wants you to know she has a decade of experience in education. Also, she's the founder and CEO of EJT Consulting, as well as Get Launched Consulting, a Doctoral Candidate in Education Leadership at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has helped 200 clients grow their education consulting business.

There are a few other items on her cv. She got a Masters of Education in Instructional School Leadership from Relay Graduate School of Education, a "graduate school" created by three not-really teachers. She was a Doctoral Resident and Harvard Education Fellow at the Aspen Institute. Her undergrad degree in 2008 was from Ohio State; she earned a BS in Textiles and Clothing (and, if you recall, 2008 was not a great year for that kind of work). So you know what comes next-- when she headed off to Charlotte-Mecklenberg Schools in 2008, it was as a Teach for America newbie. After one year in the classroom, she spent a year as a TFA program director, then went into the New Leaders program for growing principals with a particular emphasis on diversity. As a principal, she got attention for implementing a version of the "have great teachers teach more kids." Use the data and we can find the Beyonce educators and give them a bigger venue. She tells the story of how she took one teacher and put him in charge of 950 "scholars" by having him design the lessons, coach the classroom teachers, and sit with "his teachers" to analyze data. She has a TEDxCharlotte talk where she talks about her career as a high school math teacher; she does not mention that it was just one year long.

Dr. EJT's alma mater is proud of her. She's gotten lots of positive attention before even turning thirty. But she is also a fine example of another person who branded herself as an education expert with no real experience in the field, pushing the reformy ideas favored by other people with no real experience in the field, even as she moves on swiftly to her next gig, and whose pitch is now "if it weren't for the tools, strategies, and resources I reveal inside Six-Figure Educator Live...I'd still be in debt...and living paycheck to paycheck as a principal." She seems positive, strong, and smart as hell--but in her larger career trajectory, the classroom is just a blip and the school building a slightly larger blip. Education could do with not so many shooting star passing-through "experts" these days.

The seminar is in two weeks, so if this seems like you're dream, by all means, sign up--it's only $49 non-refundable dollars. Or if you'd like to invite me to come talk to your group, I'm available for far less than six figures.