SCOTUS Will Take On School Prayer

Later this month, the Supreme Court will take on the case of Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. If you have not been paying attention to this case of the praying coach, you should take a look, because once again the court is contemplating smashing holes in the wall between church and state.

The case comes from Washington State, where high school football coach Joe Kennedy made a practice of taking a knee for a brief prayer at the end of games. He started the practice when he was hired in 2008, along with motivational prayers for the team, and the district let it go while it was small and quiet. But then he started taking his knee in the middle of the football stadium, while players were still on the field and fans were in the stadium. It became quite a Thing, with players (sometimes from both teams) joining him for the prayer and, reportedly on one occasion, so many folks rushing the prayer that they knocked over marching band members. The district told him to knock it off and tried to find a compromise (he was offered another location), but Kennedy decided he would Take A Stand and keep at it anyway. Here's how Vox describes the next stage of this mess:

What followed was a circus. Kennedy went on a media tour presenting himself as a devout coach who “made a commitment with God” to performatively pray after each game. Good Morning America did a segment on him. Conservative media ran with headlines like “High School Coach Bullied Into Dropping Prayer at Football Games.” By the end of the month, 47 members of Congress — all Republicans — wrote to Leavell in support of Kennedy.

The district put him on administrative leave. Kennedy decided to take the case to court. He lost on the lower levels, but he had established a Cause. In the meantime, he did not reapply for the job, though conservative media like to report that he was fired from coaching at the school. 

Kennedy acquired legal representation from First Liberty Institute, a Texas-based legal outfit specializing in cases for the Christian Right. They ran the case up to SCOTUS, but in 2019 the Supremes sent it back to the minors, because more facts needed to be developed, but Justices Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh indicated that they didn't much like the lower court ruling against the former coach.

But he hasn't given up. Fox has had him on numerous times, where he explains that he has to fight for what is right and what is right for America. Besides his high powered legal firm and the above-mentioned 47 Congresspersons, Kennedy has drawn support from folks like Mike Pence and Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita.

The lower court ruled, essentially, that Kennedy was working as a public employee and therefor his private First Amendment rights didn't apply, which ironically is much like the argument conservatives make when they say that teachers can't just teach whatever they choose or read whatever they like in a classroom (I should note that essentially I agree with them). 

Defenders of the former coach argue that the prayer wasn't mandatory, which is a baloney argument. Reminds me of how high school teams have "optional" practices during the pre-season, and every player understands that these practices are only optional if you don't care whether you get to play or not. Coach Kennedy never waved his players onto the field to join him--he didn't have to. As one atheist player complained, he felt the need to participate in the prayer because he wouldn't get to play as much if he didn't. 

The SCOTUS objections to the lower court ruling, written by Alito, is even more bonkers, suggesting that the coach was "plainly not on duty." I don't know how they do things in Washington, but here in my neighborhood if a coach got in his car and went home five seconds after the final whistle, leaving his teenaged athletes to get themselves in and out of the locker room and on their way, that coach would be having a Come To Jesus meeting the very next morning.

To me (and plenty of other folks), Kennedy's behavior is a clear Constitutional violation. But the way things are tending these days in SCOTUSLand, I'm not confident that we aren't going to see a newly invented right of public school employees to exercise their right to evangelize whenever they wish. 

There are so many problems here. Sooooo many. Let's start with the teaming up a right to freely practice your religion as a school employee with the recently-created right to exercise your religion by denying service to people to whom you object--will public school teachers not only be able to start classes with prayers, but also refuse to teach LGBTQ students? 

There's also the Be Careful What You Wish For element. How about a coach who lays out his prayer rug on the fifty yard line so he can kneel toward Mecca? How about a coach who wants to honor the team victory by sacrificing a live chicken on the field? And you can bet that the Satanic Temple will be ready with more of the sorts of challenges they have presented in the past.

And what about students who aren't Christian? If the court decides to open more religious floodgates, there are plenty of administrators and teachers who will sail happily through them. I know-- I used to work for and with them. In 1997, a district just up the road ended up in court because an atheist student sicced the ACLU on them over prayers at graduation. It was ugly--adults in the community accused the student of doing Satan's Work. The student won, further cementing the idea that graduation prayers could happen only if student initiated (wink wink, nudge nudge). And yet, with that clear local legal precedent, I listened to superintendents open sixth grade graduations with a prayer-- and not just a bland generic God prayer, but an explicitly Jesusy prayer. All of which reminds me of my former student who suffered through a year of an elementary teacher who tried to convert her from Judaism. 

If Kennedy wins, things will get ugly in many corners of the country. But there will be much rejoicing among the people who believe that Christians need to "take schools back." 

Meanwhile, I'm sure I'm not the first person to suggest that Joseph Kennedy and his supporters check out the Book of Matthew 6:5-6--

5 “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

SCOTUS is supposed to be looking at the case later this month. Stay tuned. 

James Blew Wants To Squelch Title I

James Blew has made a career out of ed reformsterism. He was director of Student Success California, part of the 50CAN reformy network, the Alliance for School Choice, and he served a stint as president of StudentsFirst, the national reform advocacy group founded by Michelle Rhee, former DC chancellor and ed reform's Kim Kardashian. He was the director of the Walton family Foundation's K-12 "reform investments" for a decade. His background is, of course, not education, but business, politics and "communications."

In July of 2018, he rounded that career in dismantling public ed by going to work for Betsy DeVos as Assistant Secretary for Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development, where he continued that work. After that, he became a roaming consultant and then launched the Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies ("America is under siege by radical activists and teacher union bosses. DFI exists to fight back.")

Blew pops up occasionally at Education Next, the publication of the right-tilted Fordham Institution thinky tank, most recently to complain that the Biden budget wants to spend too much money on education, specifically, Title I. 

Blew has articulated some special positions before, like the time he argued that schools aren't systematically racist, they're just a system that reinforces racism, and then extended that thought to say that, actually, schools are the source of racism. But this piece is a good concise example of the arguments being made now around Biden's education spending.

Blew is honest about his ideal funding arrangement right up front, as he introduces the idea that Biden's view of the federal role in education funding is all wrong:

Looking critically at it will help explain why Betsy DeVos and other thoughtful conservatives advocate block-granting the whole amount to states without strings, and then weaning them off federal funds completely over time.

Federal spending on education should be $0.00, so the budget proposal's big numbers are Bad. Having expressed his real reason for the objection (the feds shouldn't spend money on education), he will now try to construct some other arguments.

For instance, Now Is Not The Time because we have A) inflation, B) war and C) all those relief dollars that schools are "swimming--some would say drowning" in. 

But the big line item is Title I, and that's what Blew really wants to talk about. He wants you to know that 90% of districts and 60% of schools see a piece of this action. 

That’s based on the education department’s definition of “economically disadvantaged,” in case you thought Title I-A was directed to the less than 20 percent of American children who live in poverty.

Respect to Blew, whose snark game is strong. He also notes that "education department politicos" talk about the large asked-for increase 'defensively." They note that Biden promised to triple it (I can confirm that during the primary, Dem candidates got all caught up in a contest of Title I multipliers; given a long enough primary, we probably would have seen promises to increase it a gazillion times). 

But Blew is unimpressed. Title I is "immensely popular"--well, 'among public-school employees." It's aimed at children that "our K-12 system has historically failed to educate" and is helpful for "if nothing else, assuaging guilt." It "flows painlessly from federal coffers," and finally, "compliance and management of Title I creates more than a few jobs." Blew says "Title I has a good brand, especially among public-school employees." 

If you don't yet get that Title I is kind of a scam, Blew goes on to claim that "economically disadvantaged students are, sadly, still ill-educated today pretty much as they were in 1965." He is not going to offer any evidence for that assertion.

Blew offers some explanation of the tactics behind Title I. Democrats, of course, back it because they count on the "powerful labor unions" to get them elected. Meanwhile, the GOP worries they'll get "smeared" if the dare oppose the popular brand. 

Blew also notes that Biden is holding back some Titel I increase to reward states that take certain equity measures, and I don't disagree with him as he calls out the feds for using money to manipulate states. He also points out that the Biden administration probably will claim to have tripled Title I by counting both the budget increase and the emergency relief funding. Probably true. 

In the end, Blew dismisses the proposed education budget as pandering on behalf of "political allies," claiming that "money is being thrown at just about everything his political allies could hope for" and that "this administration values its political allies without regard for student outcomes or stewardship of taxpayer resources." And he's upset that the expenditures don't "encourage the changes that our students need and deserve," which is a little at odds with his opening argument that federal spending on education should be $0.00 (nor is it clear how a budget of $0.00 can be used to push changes).

Look, I'm no huge fan of the feds, who have a bipartisan talent for getting education policy Really Wrong. Blew complains about the status quo, but at this point the status quo has been largely created by reformsters, as well as an endless game of political football far more informed by gamesmanship and messaging than actual knowledge of or concern about education. 

But this far right framing of public education as a giant scam concocted so that teachers can be used to funnel money to the unions which in turn only to grab more money and use it to elect Democrats is both tiresome and completely divorced from the actual reality of actual teachers working in actual classrooms to educate actual students. It treats the pursuit of a decent, equitable public education system as a grift and gets in the way of the conversations we need to have, like how to best serve the underserved students in this country.

The State of US Book Banning

PEN America is having quite the year, emerging as an organization that has helped us all keep tabs on the new wave of attempts to ban books. Now they've released a report looking at the whole picture of the rising tide of educational gag orders, and while I recommend that you go read the whole thing for yourself, including their index of school book bans, let me just pass along some of the more striking items in the report. 

And let me underline the fact that this covers just a nine month period. Nine months, covering 26 states and 86 school districts.

The index lists bans on a grand total of 1,145 books, with 874 authors and 198 illustrators having their work targeted. 819 works of fiction. 209 children's picture books. 31 graphic novels. 150 chapter books. 537 young adult titles.

Nobody wants to argue that every book is appropriate for every student, nor do school libraries have infinite space. Furthermore, I agree with those critics who say that schools and school personnel work for the public and do not function as independent agents answerable to nobody. For all those reasons, groups like the American Library Association have guidelines for best practices in making decisions about books, and most school districts have a procedure by which parents can challenge the presence of a work. But what PEN America found is that many of these bans are completely circumventing any such procedures. In the worst cases, we're finding schools where administrators are quietly yanking books they think have potential to draw criticism, without following any procedure at all. 

A mere 4% of the books banned "have been the result of processes that began with the filing of formal challenges to library or classroom materials by community members." In other words, lots of "concerned citizens" are skipping right past the procedures available to them to address their concerns and are skipping ahead to pitchforks, torches, and rants at board meetings. It's almost as if they are not as concerned about addressing the concerns about the books as they are in sowing chaos and eroding support for the district. There are several specific examples in the report; none of them will make you feel better. In one case, a single parent got five books booted from a class, including Night by Elie Weisel.

The greatest number of titles are being banned from classrooms (470), plus the 143 titles banned from both libraries and classrooms. 506 titles are banned "pending investigation."

The report finds that 41% of the bans came not from concerned parents or community members, but came from state officials or elected lawmakers. That, PEN America notes, is a big change in how these things happen.

The index does not include books that have been, well, partly banned. In Williamson County, Tennessee, a district with an exceptionally noisy Moms For Liberty group, several books have had select pages banned-- teachers may not read certain pages aloud. The infamous seahorse book has two pages banned from student view; those are the sex pages, which are displayed in the report, and let me tell you--they are some hotttt stuff. Okay, not really, but they do show seahorses twining tails and also mention that the female puts the eggs in the male's pouch, so maybe that's the problem.

Here's how the bans break down by states and districts. Way to go, Texas. 

Some of these bans are being reversed on review, or by court challenge, or just some level of respect for the First Amendment prevailing.

PEN America broke the bans down by topic. Here's how that looks.

LGBTQ+ topics or prominent characters:     379 titles

Protagonists of color:  467 titles

Jewish or Muslim characters and themes:  18 titles

Sexual or health-related content:   283 titles, including titles about sex, abortion, teen pregnancy, puberty, sexual assault.

Race and racism:   247 titles

History: 184 titles, including picture books about Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ruby Bridges, Duke Ellington, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Sonia Sotomayor, Nelson Mandela, and Malala Yousafzai.

Death, grief and suicide: 122 titles. Which, yes, is scary stuff. But maybe keeping students with questions from searching for answers is not a big help. 

The report has several great quotes with it, but I'll leave you with this one from author Ashley Hope Perez:

Book challengers may convince themselves that they want to save the kids. But it’s a damaging myth that removing a story about painful aspects of human experience will in any way protect young people. This is like arguing that a school-wide moratorium on discussions of bullying will eliminate the problem. Silence is the real threat.

Take a look at the full report.

Cory Doctorow And Tech Baloney

Sometimes in this space I mostly just want to say "Hey, look at this!" This is one of those posts.  When it comes to ed tech, there's nobody better to read than Audrey Watters. But when it comes to slicing modern tech baloney, Cory Doctorow has a pretty sharp knife, and while he doesn't directly address education very often, many of his critiques make some points instantly recognizable to education folks. 

Take this interview from 2020 in the Guardian.

Technologists have failed to listen to non-technologists. In technological circles, there’s a quantitative fallacy that if you can’t do maths on it, you can just ignore it. And so you just incinerate the qualitative elements and do maths on the dubious quantitative residue that remains. This is how you get physicists designing models for reopening American schools – because they completely fail to take on board the possibility that students might engage in, say, drunken eyeball-licking parties, which completely trips up the models.

We've been suffering from the "if you can't do maths on it" fallacy for a couple of decades now, and it is showing little sign of abating.

Here he is in that interview talking about The Social Dilemma, a documentary in which some "prodigal tech bros" make sad face noises about their work in big tech.

One of the problems with The Social Dilemma is that it supposes that tech did what it claims it did – that these are actually such incredible geniuses that they figured out how to use machine learning to control minds. And that’s the problem – the mind control thing they designed to sell you fidget spinners got hijacked to make your uncle racist. But there’s another possibility, which is that their claims are rubbish. They just overpromised in their sales material, and that what actually happened with that growth of monopolies and corruption in the public sphere made people cynical, angry, bitter and violent. In which case the problem isn’t that their tools were misused. The problem is that the structures in which those tools were developed are intrinsically corrupt and corrupting.

And he offers this cool frame for understanding what Facebook does, and why that's making the world worse.

What Facebook does is it locates people. So if you want to locate people, because you want to say something heterodox, which you might get punished for if you shouted it aloud, you can quietly find and talk to them.

That’s not an unalloyed evil – this is how we got Black Lives Matter, non-binary gender identity and so on. People have been able to find one another and quietly share the fact that they disagreed with the overarching consensus and build a coalition.

But you also get people locating people and saying: “Hey, you know, I’m not gonna openly call myself a racist when I’m running for office, but you and I, we’re both quite racist. And I just wanted you to know that.”

So you can build a coalition of racists who would otherwise struggle to find one another because of the social risk that they take if they go public with their views, but it’s really not the same thing as mind control.

So, it's not that these folks are being created so much as they're being connected and given the feelinmg that they aren't outliers and don't have to stay silent any more. 

If you don't follow Doctorow on the tweeter or elsewhere, I recommend him. You probably won't always agree, but his insights are usually brain-slapping thought stimulation. 

ICYMI: Not A Great Week Edition (4/10)

We said goodbye to yet another member of the extended family this week, so that got things off to a sad start. And now that I look at the week's readings--well, I will warn you up front that it is not an encouraging batch. This is probably a good week not read absolutely everything here.

Tucker Carlson calls on men to storm into schools "and thrash the teacher"

Let's get the most infuriating thing out of the way first. No, there's not full context for the quote. Is there a context that would make it better? I don't think so.

Betsy DeVos and Her Money Is Backing Ron DeSantis

No big surprises here, but at Salon, Igor Derysh breaks down how DeVos money is funding Florida's governor.

Fact check on DeSantis Don't Say Gay story

You'll be shocked to discover that one of DeSantis's stories about the need for the Don't Say Gay law is not entirely acurate. 

What Teachers Do

This may be the shortest post you ever read from the indispensable Mercedes Schneider, but if you're a teacher, you will recognize this week in a teacher's life.

Missing: Future teachers ins colleges of education

NEA takes a look at how the pipeline is doing, and the answer is "not well." For example, "While 55 percent of U.S. students are People of Color, nearly 70 percent of prospective teachers are White, the AACTE analysis found."

The harm caused by the third grade reading ultimatum

Nancy Bailey looks at some of the damage created by the whole "pass the third grade reading test or else" movement.

Did we really learn anything about schools in the pandemic?

Valerie Strauss asks the big question-- specifically, did we learn anything that we did not already know?

State takeover of school districts no silver bullet

From Commonwealth magazine. In which Massachusetts learns that district takeover by the state doesn't actually do any good. In other news, the sun is expected to rise in the East tomorrow.

What music teachers do in the summer

Nancy Flanagan with a reminder that for many teachers, summer is not strictly a vacation.

Many teens report emotional and physical abuse by parents during lockdown

I'm sending you to this New York Times piece via the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette so you can skirt the firewall. It's a discouraging piece, but teachers can get confirmation here of their sense of the heavy load some students have been carrying the past couple of years.

Southwest Missouri high school teacher accused of using critical race theory loses job

A simple privilege checklist for a reading unit was enough to get this teacher a non-renewal of her contract, even though she had the support of her administration. Infuriating and depressing.

No, machine learning can't predict trustworthiness based on faces

Not directly tied to education, but a useful addition to the "No, Ai Is Not Magic" file. From The Debrief, a look at how some bad old claims get a new life via software.

"Educators are afraid" says teacher attacked for Romeo and Julliet unit

At Valerie Strauss's Washington Post column, teacher Sarah Mulhern Gross explains just how scary it is out there these days. 

If standardized tests were going to succeed, they would have done so by now

Steven Singer walks us through some of the history of education's greatest failed policy idea.

Mitchell Robinson for Michigan State Board of Education

Friend of the Institute Mitch Robinson is running for the state board. Passionate and committed and exceedingly well-informed, he would be an excellent choice. If you are a Michigan voter, you should vote for him.

What Biden's proposed reforms to the charter school program really say

There's a lot of flap this week over the proposed changed to a federal charter grant program, mostly because the charter lobby really really really hates it. Once again, we turn to Valerie Strauss's column at the Washington Post, this time to hear from Carol Burris about what's really going on. You can also read what I have to say about here at Forbes and here at this blog. The next few days are your last to go make a comment in support, and you should definitely do that.

Also at Forbes.com this week (I was busy)

North Carolina has a terrible idea about how to change their already-terrible teacher pay system

and

Check out this new method from the far-far-right for trying to scare school board's into compliance.

PA: Principal Charged With Wiretapping

File this under "Well At Least I'm Not Working At That School."

Edward Pietroski is the principal of Conneaut Area Senior High School (over in my northwestern corner of the state). Last November several faculty members at the school held a meeting. Months later, they learned that their principal, with the assistance of the assistance principal, had recorded the meeting without anyone's consent or knowledge. Whoops.

Last month, a criminal complaint was filed and Pietroski was arraigned before Magisterial District Judge Adam Stallard, then released on non-monetary bond, with a preliminary hearing scheduled for later this month.

Pietroski is still working in the district, staying in the office, and having no contact with the four teachers who reported the recording. Other administrators within the district are being shuffled around to cover some of the workload. Pietroski has gotten himself a lawyer, but the discussion about who exactly would be funding his defense is still going on. The school website carries a message from the board:

The Board of School Directors has been fully informed regarding the matter involving the high school principal. The Board understands that the single criminal charge arises from the recording of a faculty meeting. As this involves an open and pending legal matter as well as a personnel matter, the Board cannot discuss further information at this time. The Board intends to comply with all legal requirements as this matter proceeds. For the present, the Board recognizes that under our system of justice, the principal carries a presumption of innocence. The Board will continue to assess the matter as it progresses.

What was Pietroski thinking? He's been through the wringer before (his previous gig was at a school that had a library book flap and before that he taught in Baltimore). Reportedly the investigation shows that he was recording the faculty meeting for one teacher who was not going to be able to attend. Staff members received copies of the recording; one told the teacher who had missed the meeting not to let anyone know that they had a recording. The "recording a meeting for a person who will be absent" seems innocuous, but it does raise questions. Why didn't the absent teacher just ask a colleague to record it on their phone? Why didn't anyone tell the teachers they were being recorded? And how bad do staff-administrations relations have to be (and Pietroski is a new-ish hire) for teachers to react to this news by taking it to the police? 

Right now everyone's keeping quiet. We'll see what more story comes out in the weeks ahead. The felony wiretapping charge carries a maximum penalty of seven years in jail and a $15,000 fine. 

PA: In Erie, School Shooting Followed By Teacher Walkout

On Tuesday (4/5) at 9:30 AM, the school day at Erie High School was interrupted by a shooting. Several shots were fired within the building, with one person injured. There was, of course, a lockdown (more about that in a moment) and a hefty police response.

The shooting was described as "an isolated, targeted incident." These days, I guess, it's good-ish news if a school shooting is committed by one student with a particular beef with another student, and not some sort of grandiose attempt to terrorize the entire school. Yesterday, the shooter turned himself in.

School was canceled for the rest of the week, and next week is a regularly scheduled spring. The district announced that it will be working on a comprehensive plan to re-open safely. Said Superintendent Brian Polito, "The well being of our students and staff is and always will be our priority, and we will take every measure possible to ensure their safety and security."

Teachers, however, delivered a message today via a letter from their union: they will not be back in the building until safety issues are fixed; they will be teaching remotely. They included a list, and it's kind of mind-boggling.

The shooting prompted a lockdown--but what do you do if there's an active shooter lockdown and your classroom doors don't lock!

Listed concerns from the letter:

*Fully functioning locks on all interior doors to rooms in which a staff person is assigned, to include the ability to lock and unlock the door from within the room.
*Fully functioning locks on all exterior doors to the building.
*Fully functioning communication devices for every staff person (i.e. walkie talkies, phones, PA system, etc.)
*An increase in security and/or police presence in highly visible and well-trafficked areas.
*The installation of fully functioning metal detectors. Until that can be accomplished, all students shall be scanned with handheld electronic devices which detect weapons.
*Clear, established procedures related to discipline and student behavioral interventions which are in writing and distributed to all staff. In addition, these procedures must be consistently applied and consistently enforced by all staff and administrators.
*Written instructions for student removal procedures, distributed to all staff.
*Fully functioning security cameras.
*All EEA members shall have access to the “Behavior” tab in Infinite Campus for every currently enrolled student at the High School.

These are the items on the "we're not coming back till these are done" list. There's a second "and we better get moving on these" list that includes things like staff training for emergency and crisis situations and security blinds. 

Erie has had more than its share of issues; it was just six years ago that the then-superintendent proposed closing the public high schools because they couldn't afford to run it any more. The city's district remains a poster child for charter-induced death spiral. So it's not the hugest surprise that they somehow haven't been able to put locks on classroom doors-- they've been spending money on marketing battles.

I cannot imagine what a huge gut punch it must be to learn that there is an active shooter in your building and at the same time to realize that you don't even have the fundamental things in place to protect your students and yourself. Particularly if you have already spent months and months trying to get those issues corrected. 

In an era in which educators and school personnel are warning of a rise in violence directed at them, it seems like having the ability to lock gunmen out of your room would be a pretty basic piece of infrastructure. Not only should a school be a safe place, but letting things get this bad invites over-correction and treating students like the enemy, which is also very bad news. Meanwhile, schools throughout northwest PA are practicing their lockdown drills this week. Here's hoping that Erie can sort things out by the time spring break is over.