Abbott Elementary and the Problem of TV Teachers

Abbott Elementary is the surprise hit of the year, particularly for teachers. The teachers are human beings, the stories are relatable while being recognizable for teachers. It adapts school life well to the mockumenbtary workplace comedy format, even if it hews too close to the formula in some places (the show blares its intention to run a long-simmering plotline in which the main character will eventually dump her bad boyfriend, Jim-and-Pamming her way to the fellow teacher who has a crush on her). 

If you haven't seen it, you should. Scrambling for supplies, finding the resources you need, navigating the tension between your idealism and reality, working as a veteran teacher in the brave new world of education in the 2020s-- those are all here, as well as the painful learning of lessons by all parties. Also, students who look and act like actual students. It is that extremely rare show about teaching created by people who appear to actually get it.

It's so smart and on point and just right about teaching (as right as it can be in 22 minutes a shot) that it makes you wonder why television so often gets teaching wrong in shows. 

Part of the challenge is, of course, that teaching is largely mundane and packed with things that are only exciting if you are a teacher. There's also the challenge of story-- because teachers are, in many ways, not the center of their own stories, but supporting characters in the stories of their students. And of course, television limits the size of a cast; it would be hard to work all of a high school English teachers 175 students into a single series--and then recast them every year.

Perhaps those limitations are why they are so many classroom misfires in the history of tv. 

Teaching as a profession is sometimes used to provide some backstory for a character. Ted Mosby, Ross Geller, and Jessica Day (Zooey Deschanel on New Girl) are all nominally teachers, and yet other than generating the occasional plot device, teaching doesn't really get much attention and certainly doesn't factor in realistic details like grading papers or scraping by on small pay. This idea of teaching as a sort of character background detail goes all the way back to Our Miss Brooks, a 1950s hit from Desilu Studies starring Eve Arden as a teacher who has some co-workers, a boss and generally just one student (played by in-hi-slate-twenties Richard Crenna). Clara Oswold is a teacher, but somehow she never has to do lesson plans on the TARDIS.

Dramatic shows that include teaching have to really ramp up the drama. A peak example would be Boston Public, from, David E. Kelly; it did show the crowded underfunded nightmare of an urban school, but spent almost no time on actual teaching. Instead some stereotypical characters blasted through plots heavy on sex and violence. (No, I'm not going to count Walter White.)

TV teachers who have become supporting characters on their own shows (sometimes to the frustration of the actors playing them) would include examples like Howard Hesseman (Head of the Class) and Gabe Kotter, both of whom took a back seat to the breakout stars in their classrooms. They were also examples of that TV phenomenon--the teacher who only teaches one small class. As the meme says, the most unbelievable thing about the Magic Schoolbus is not the magic, but the idea that Miss Frizzle only has eight kids in her class. The peak of the phenomenon would be Mr. Feeney, who only taught one group of students, and was so committed to being their supporting cast that he followed them through elementary school, high school, and college. 

Television teachers are either noble or hilariously incompetent. They either never take work home, or simply cease to exist outside of school. The entertainment industry has a terrible time envisioning the world of teaching and the people who serve there. TV teachers are the equivalent of movie musicians--you know, the ones who are just told a song title and suddenly they're playing a full-fledged arrangement of it. TV teachers never prepare or do outside work; they just somehow stand up and start teaching stuff. It is almost like a child's version of teaching-- children never see teachers doing anything except hanging out in the classroom, so that must be the whole gig, right?

There is one old series that made a real attempt to portray teaching and schools well. Room 222 was the first series created by then-rising tv writer James L. Brooks, before he created the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Room 222 premiered in 1969 and featured Lloyd Haines as a high school history teacher, Denise Nicholas as a guidance counselor, Karen Valentine as a student teacher, and Michael Constantine as the principal. The show quickly dropped its laugh track and became a dramedy (before MASH even premiered). Room 222 dealt with lots of real issues, from contemporary concerns like the war to social issues and just growing up issues. It tried to be realistic (in the first sixty seconds of the first episode, you hear a teacher asking after still-missing supplies). The students are mostly student age, and Brooks tries to be contemporary--students really "dig" Haines' character, and in another episode, they say want to "rap about our scene." In another episode, the very bubbly and optimistic student teacher (who reminds me more than a little of Janine Teagues of Abbott) struggles (in a single-episode way) with classroom management. The show won some awards in its first year, didn't draw much of an audience, then was shipped off to the Friday night death spot right after Brady Bunch and Partridge Family, with which it didn't really belong. 

In other words, the last attempt to put a realistic take on teaching on tv didn't end all that well, so kudos to Abbott Elementary for pulling it off. 

NH: Lessons From Croydon's 50% School Budget Cut

Well, you can't pretend that the Free Staters of New Hampshire are at all secretive about what they have in mind. Here's the story of how they just went ahead and axed a school district budget. But first, let me fill in the background.

The Free Staters are a bunch of folks who believe they can move into the Granite State, take over the levers of government, and then install their Libertarian dream state, which is to say a government-free land of do as you please. The book A Libertarian Walks Into A Bear is a fair and sometimes hilarious look at how it's going, but we have more progress to report in the education department. 

Free Staters have gotten pretty open about the dream. In a Libertarian Institute podcast, one Free State Project Board member, Jeremy Kaufman, explained that school choice and vouchers are just "a stepping stone towards reducing or eliminating state involvement in schools." Rachel Goldsmith, head of a NH Moms for Liberty chapter (the one that put a bounty o0n teachers' heads) is a previous executive director of the Free State Project.

But some Free Staters prefer to be even less subtle. Meet Ian and Jody Underwood. They moved to New Hampshire in 2007 as part of the Free State Project. Before moving, Jody had worked for the Educational Testing Service, and before that a researcher for NASA and Carnegie Mellon University. Ian was a "planetary scientist and artificial intelligence researchers for NASA," a certified hypnotist, a "fourth generation wing chun sifu,"as well as director of the Ask Dr. Math program. These days Ian is a writer (find him at Granite Grok); he also ran an unsuccessful campaign for the state legislature (motto--I kid you not-- "the way forward is back"). Jody served for years as secretary of the board of directors of the Free State Project; she's also still working on games and learning simulations for Intelligent Automation, Inc. And you can read here her thoughts about why vouchers don't go nearly far enough.

The Underwoods, who have no children, are active in their community in other ways. They've settled in Croydon, NH (a small town just up the road from where I spent my childhood), where Ian is a selectman, and Jody is on the school board.

They are connected. In 2017, the Valley News raised a small flap over the discovery that Jody reached out to her friend Frank Edelblut (former legislator turned education commissioner, at whose confirmation hearing the Underwoods testified) about getting some consulting work for Ian. It's kind of a nothingburger, but the story illustrates how chummy Edelblut and the Underwoods are.\

The Underwoods have lots of ideas about cutting government spending. In 2020, Croydon made the news after the selectmen, including Underwood, decided to fire Croydon's only police officer. After twenty years of service, Richard Lee was told to turn in his uniform and equipment after the surprise motion; so he stripped down to briefs, boots and hat and walked home. He was not replaced; instead Underwood and the other two selectmen abolished the department. 

Croydon still has old fashioned town meetings. At the most recent one, during the school portion, Ian Underwood offered a surprise motion from the floor to the school board where his wife sat as chair-- cut the school's $1.7 million budget to $800,000. The motion passed with a vote of 20-14, which represents about 3% of the town's eligible voters.

Croydon only serves about 80 students. 24 K-4 students attend in the one school building. Students in grades 5-12 have tuition paid at the family's choice of schools, private or public--most at nearby Newport School District, but also Sunapee and Claremont (where I started out life). Ian Underwood, who had written a blog post equating the school budget with ransom, said he based his figure on spending $10,000 per student.

That $10K does not come close to covering the tuition for the upper grade students. Newport's tuition rate is about to rise to $17,880. Private tuition costs are, with only two exceptions, also higher than the $10K. And of course the costs of special ed, transportation, and administration. So in the end, each student will not simply get a $10K pseudo-voucher from the school.

The Underwoods say it's all good. "This gives us an opportunity," said Jody. "This is going to force us to step back and figure out a good way to do this [based] on what we know about how people learn, so that we can keep costs down." Another board member cautioned against a "failure of imagination." Options like a virtual school or learning pods with new New Hampshire BFF Prenda were also tossed out.

People are pissed. The school board meeting two days later drew a crowd of 100 mostly-angry people, destined to be even more frustrated to learn that the budget passage was legal and binding and can't simply be reversed.  And that's where things stand at the moment.

So what are the lessons here?

First, notice that this has absolutely nothing to do with school choice. Croydon had school choice; in fact, one of the angry citizens is Angi Beaulieu, a former school board member who worked hard to create a choice system for Croydon. But this budget cut will trash the choice system they had, with 5-12 grade families having neither the choice of a local school nor the choice of continuing with the public or private school. So this action by the Free State Libertarian crowd actual reduced the school choice options for the parents of their town. 

It's almost as if, for some of these folks, choice is actually unimportant and the real goal is to get government out of education and leave parents to fend for themselves without any taxpayer support. There's no talk about improved quality through competition, or parent's right to choose the best fit for their kids--just "cut my taxes and get the government public education system shut down."

Second, 34 eligible voters out of just over 500 showed up. I don't know-- meetings are boring, politics are boring, nothing important was going to happen. (Update: I have since been informed that there was a snowstorm at the time). But if seven more people who wanted to save their public education system had shown up, this would not be a story. If all of the people who screamed bloody murder about the results after the meeting had shown up for the meeting.

Finally, having money follow the children is not a great way to create a sustainable school system. Funding children and not systems just gets you no system in which to place the child (which, as we're seeing, is the point for some folks). Well--or as Croydon previously found, if you really give people choice, it's expensive.

I have no idea how much of Croydon is Free Staters; the Underwoods have been there for a while and have never made a secret of how they stand, so there's been ample previous opportunity to vote them out, and people haven't. So maybe the only lesson here is that if you have children to raise, New Hampshire may not be a good bet. Or maybe Croydon will follow the rest of the state in re-installing public education supporters. We'll see what the next chapter holds. 

PA: New Charter Regs Are A Start

 Monday Pennsylvania's Independent Regulatory Review Commission gave a 3-2 victory to Governor Wolf's latest move in his ongoing attempts to update the state's decades-old charter regulations. 

These new regulations do not address some of the persistent issues (particularly PA's messed up funding system for charters), but it does provide a few pieces of much-needed transparency and accountability. Charter schools are fond of insisting they are public schools; these regulations require them to act a little more as if that were true. 

The new regulations address six areas of charter operation.

The application requirements are now more rigorous and will require a form developed by the state department of education. The form will include detailed data about who the students will be, how the school will be run, and what the curriculum will look like.

The charters must publish detailed enrollment data as well as enrollment policies. This matters because it will force schools to reveal at least some of the hurdles they've put in the way of students with special needs or other challenges.

Charter school trustees must follow Public Official and Employee Ethics Act, including revealing in financial interests and avoid conflicts of interest. No self-dealing.

Charter schools have to follow the generally accepted standards for fiscal accounting and management. They will have to be audited.

They have to provide health care benefits to employees. And there's also a reconfiguration of timelines and due dates for getting charters their money.

Does any of that sound radical or out of line? No, it doesn't, but charters have fought every step of the way. It will be hard. It will cost money. Well, sure. Accountability is hard, but PA taxpayers will fork over around $3 billion to charters; they deserve to know how the money was spent. Ed Voters of Pennsylvania was more blunt: "Don't cheat, don't steal, don't discriminate against students." It's not that hard.

Some GOP legislators have objected to the governor's use of the regulatory process to do an end run around the legislature, and they have a point-- this is no way to manage this stuff, if for no other reason than what Wolf does can be undone by the next governor. But then, this is the same GOP that is trying to do an end run around the governor's veto power by proposing new laws as constitutional amendments. It's one more version of our traditional mess--our legislature is intransigent, and Governor Wolf tends to govern like a former CEO rather than a coalition-building politician. What the heck--at least we've been able to pass a budget for the past few years. But I digress.

The charter changes are not exactly sweeping; mostly they fall into the "Wait--you mean they didn't already have to do that?!" category, which is why it's important that they rules now exist. Taxpayers deserve basic accountability from everyone who is hoovering up some of their dollars. There are far bigger issues that need to be addressed when it comes to charter school regulation in the commonwealth, especially when it comes to funding, but these are a positive step.

Public Education's PR Problem

Last week a New York Times opinion piece by Jessica Grose presented a conclusion that was not exactly news to those of us in the education world-- despite the loud yawling from the vicinity of the parents rights area, parents in this country are mostly happy with their children's schools.

In fact, despite the pandemic-related chaos, according to Gallup, more parents were satisfied with the quality of education being received by their children than were satisfied in 2013 or 2006. And that leads us to this not-shocking revelation:

Digging deeper into the Gallup numbers revealed that the people who seem to be driving the negative feelings toward American schools do not have children attending them: Overall, only 46 percent of Americans are satisfied with schools. Democrats, “women, older adults and lower-income Americans are more likely than their counterparts to say they are satisfied with K-12 education,” Gallup found.

That plays out across and within states, and in other polls. It has been this way for years--people mostly trust and like their local schools.

Scratch the local wave of critics and attackers, and you mostly find people who don't actually have children in the school district (or, sometimes, in any school at all). That points to a productive tactic for those who want to dismantle public education, but it also points to a problem that public schools need to address.

Public schools are terrible at any kind of basic PR.

I was hit by this when I retired. When you're in the public school bubble, you're deeply aware, all the time, of what's going on in the school, right down to the day by day flow. When I retired, I expected that outside the bubble, I expected to be less aware, but even I was surprised at how little information makes it outside that bubble. 

School districts are mostly terrible at--well, let's not even call it PRT. Let's just call it the basic business of letting people know what is going on inside the schools. 

Web pages are the worst kind of barely functional Web 1.0 online brochures. Critics of a district can seem to dominate social media because the local district isn't there at all. Public schools may rarely appear in local media except when something dreadful happens. And a school district's outreach may depend on the luck of the draw--does their just happen to be someone on staff who likes doing that stuff?

There are a few potential causes.

One is that folks inside the public school bubble simply don't realize how little information makes it outside that bubble. They are soaking in it every day, and they just don't see that they're swimming in a tiny fenced off pool and not the ocean.

Another is the institutional version of "just close the door and do my job," which was a perfectly fine approach a few decades ago, but is not enough for the 21st century. "I'm just going to do my job and y'all are going to have to trust me," was never a great stance, but it's absolutely unsustainable now. You may not want to talk about your work, but a whole lot of other people do, and they're going to hold that conversation whether you bother to show up or not. 

It's understandable. For decades, school boards couldn't get the public to show up if they were handing out fifty dollar bills. Teachers considered it a miracle if more than three parents showed up for open house. But times have changed. Waiting for the public to come to you isn't enough.

I'm critical of the many bizarre non-teaching positions that have appeared in the world of education, but your district needs somebody to serve as some sort of public information point person. Someone who walks through the school, takes a picture, and puts up at least one "Here's what's happening in the school today" post. Someone who maintains the web site so that it's actually useful. Someone who peppers your local media with releases about school stuff. Someone who can come up with creative ways to get information outside the bubble to the taxpayers who don't currently have tied to people within the bubble. 

There are other factors that I recognize are open to debate. I'm a small town guy and a big proponent of living in the community where you teach, or at least adjacent (we were a two-district couple when we married). I know there are teachers who want to do their jobs then go home and never encounter students or families outside of school; I'm not sure that's a useful stance in this day and age. And after a string of faceless commuting admins in my own district, I am more adamant than ever that school administrators must be well-known public faces in their district. The best counter to "Those people are indoctrinatin' our kids with evil ideas" remains "I know that guy, and he doesn't strike me as someone who would do such evil things."

It's not just transparency--though school districts need that too. But as schools too well know, transparency, like an open window, only accomplishes something if people look. Let's call what we need active transparency-- not just making what happens in school visible to those who look, but pushing the visibility out there.

Will this end the current onslaught? Of course not. Some of the leaders of these waves of attacks are acting in bad faith, some are political opportunists, and some are the same old folks looking for any excuse to dismantle public education. But there are also plenty of people in your community who mean well and want schools to be good but whose only information has come from public school opponents. 

It's right there in the data above--people who are familiar with the local school mostly approve of it. Doesn't mean the schools are perfect. Doesn't mean that the majority don't have a legit beef. But those who know and approve of the school didn't have to be fed some kind of sophisticated marketing blather--they just had to see what the school is doing. Extend that sight outside the bubble. Not only is it good for the health and support of the school, but taxpayers deserve to know that the dysfunction-centered hollering they hear is not the whole story.

Read This Series About Hillsdale College and the Dismantling of Public Education

Teaching is our trade; also, I confess, it's our weapon.

That's Larry Arrn, the president of Hillsdale College, the very right-wing Christianist college that has become a major force in the desire of folks who want to take education back from the government (perhaps best exemplified by Betsy DeVos). For these folks, it's not about competition or improving the nation's education base or bringing greater equity to education. It's about tearing down public education and replacing it with taxpayer-funded, private Christian schools.

This three-part series from Kathryn Joyce at Salon is excellent at providing both macro and micro pictures of what this crusade looks like, and how it is unfolding across the country. I strongly recommend that you read it.

PART I: In the full-scale assault on public education, Hillsdale College is leading the charge.

Joyce takes us to Orange County in California, where a "classical academy" led by a charismatic anti-vax physician who's married to the head of the school board. The story of this couple is linked to the rise of Hillsdale, which has gone from a tiny little-known school to a bastion of MAGA anti-public education. I knew that Hillsdale was directly involved in Trump's 1776 Commission. I didn't know they'd once hired Ginni Thomas as a lobbyist.

PART II: Stealth religion and a Trumped-up version of American history

Joyce looks at the curriculum that Hillsdale backs and promotes through their very first charter initiative which, at the time, was touted as an effort "to recover our public schools from the tide of a hundred years of progressivism that has corrupted our nation's original faithfulness to the previous 24 centuries of teaching the young the liberal arts in the West." These folks are not messing around when it comes to the culture wars--accent on the wars part.

PART III: The far right's national plan for schools.

Plant charters, defund public education. Back to Orange County to see how the strategy looks on the ground, as well as looking at what these folks say they really want ("If your child isn't in school, they won't have the money, the unions won't get funded, and those schools will close down.")  Also, a trip to see how this is playing out in other states, including Florida and Tennessee, and some actual encouraging words at the end.

Throughout the series, it's remarkable the degree to which, these days, these anti-public ed folks are just saying it all out loud. Joyce has done a ton of research and leg work and the series lays out just how intent these folks are on dismantling public education as we know it and returning to some sort of imaginary golden age that never existed (and never should have). 

ICYMI: Springtime Edition (3/20)

 Pretty sure it's practically spring, more or less. Not that that means a lot around here, but still, it's nice to mark the seasons. Here's your reading for the week. Lot of paywalls this time--my apologies.

Who's unhappy with schools? The answer surprised me.

The answer probably won't surprise you. But there are some good data here in this New York Times story about how the failing schools narrative is being driven largely by people who don't have actual contact with schools.

Why the school wars still rage

Jill Lepore in the New Yorker provides historical perspective on the parents rights crt freakout that has been erupting every so often for a century.

A school created a homeless shelter in the gym

Hechinger tells a story of an unusual success. Something to make you fell better, for a change.

A "diverse" community needs to hear the truth

Nancy Flanagan with a jaw-dropping story from a not-very-diverse community. Have you subscribed to her blog yet? Because you should.

Michigan Public School Advocates Push Back

Betsy DeVos and friends have one more plan to attack public education in Michigan, and a group has formed to push back.

Schools have cash they're struggling to spend

Schools got a bunch of relief money, but they're having trouble spending it. Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat explains why.

What you should learn in the classroom about expressing your opinion

Paul Thomas has a great piece about opinions in the classroom, and why finding ways to share them is important.

The incredible shrinking TFA

Gary Rubinstein takes a look at Teach for America's diminishing fortunes and explains why it's happening.

College Board warns against censoring its AP courses

Ileano Najarro at EdWeek takes a look at the clash between the College Board and CRT panic states.

Who is the Theranos of education?

EdSurge asks a question with a million answers but settles on just a couple, but they're very deserving. Two high tech edu-scams that have deservedly declined.

A charter school family gravy train finally halted

This story from North Carolina of Torchlight Academy shows how the charter biz can be a great way to make the family a lot of money, for a long time, before someone at the state level finally decides to care.

How progressives won the school culture war--in New Hampshire

Jennifer Berkshire looks at the how and who of the massive defeat of privatizers running for school board seats in the Granite State. 

Being a Good Teacher

Steve Nelson responds to a piece in EdWeek about not having to love your students.

Call Them By Their Name

I was teaching 8th grade at the time, and there were three Sheila's in my class, so I had settled on some combination of last initials, but one of the Sheila's approached me and said, "Could you just call me Andrea?' And I kept a straight face even though she pronounced it "Ahn-DRAY-ah." Because it was clearly a name she had always wanted to be called, and so that was what I called her.

It's not that hard.

I would start the year by reading off the attendance list the office computer spit out, telling students that if I butchered the pronunciation to correct me, and always reading it first name first, not last name first (because take a look at my name and just guess what elementary and middle school years were like for me), and also telling them "If you're given name is Alphonse but you prefer to go by Puddles just tell me." And every year I had several of those, either because of family nick name or personal preference. "Francis" wants to be "Butch." Or "Philomena" wants to be "Bebe." "Elizabeth" won the name lottery and gets her choice of forty-seven different nick names. My own niece and nephew both go by their middle name instead of their first. Whatever it is they want to be called, you ask, find out, and then call them that.

It's not that hard.

I was a yearbook advisor for umpty-odd years (there is no spelling of any name given to a human being that can surprise me any more). Seniors were responsible for selecting and submitting their photo. They would pick the photo they wanted, and attach the name they wanted to go with it. Barring anything obscene or inappropriate (no Nazi t-shirts, please), we would run the picture and the name they submitted.

It's not that hard.

Even my rural-ish conservative-area high school triple checked with seniors to confirm what name they wanted announced as they walked across the stage to collect their diploma. Then, at graduation, we announced that name.

It's not that hard.

I am baffled by teachers who get in a giant tizzy over a refusal to call the student by their preferred name. We already do it all the time. I have yet to come across a teacher who adamantly declared, "Your given name is 'Aloysius' so that's exactly what I'm going to call you" or "Sorry, your full name is William, so I refuse to call you Bill." 

One of the basic building blocks of a functional and effective classroom is respect, and there is huge disrespect-- massive, planet-sized, deserves-its-own-zip-code disrespect-- in telling a student, "No, I will tell you who you are, and you get no say in it." 

Lord knows, all those years ago, I had thoughts about Sheila's desire to be Andrea, but the most important thought I had was that it was none of my business and if she wanted to be called Sir Hiram Patronomicus III then I'd do so. It's not that hard.

And if your response to all this is that it's different, somehow, when a student who was one gender wants to be identified by a name that suggests a different gender, you're going to have to explain it to me slowly, because I'll be damned if I can see how. 

They tell you what their name is. You call them by that name.

It's not that hard.