ICYMI: Leaving On A Jet Plane Edition (10/16)

Today I'm hopping (well, more likely, given the state of air travel these days, trudging miserably) onto a plane to travel to Seattle to meet the newest member of the Institute. She's already a month old and I haven't met her yet. Consequently, things are probably going to be quiet around here this week. Here's some reading to tide you over.

Something of a Rut

Blue Cereal Education with a piece that takes an honest look at how it feels when your teaching wagon seems a bit stuck.

Watch out for Ron DeSantis

Okay, if you're a regular reader here, you probably don't need to be told. But Jan Resseger has assembled a list of DeSantis highlights, to be remembered when he makes his play for national office.

Don't say gay is working as intended

The father of a trans child in Florida reports that the new law is just as damaging as you expected it to be. In the Washington Post.

Cry on the Last Day of School, Too

Jose Luis Vilson with a great piece of appreciation for Abbott Elementary and a reminder of why it's the show teachers need right now. 

Lawsuits put school choice on Vermont Legislature’s agenda 

Vermont has had a quiet little version of school choice for a while now, but, as this piece from Valley News explains, the Vermont legislature may have to have a bit of a talk about what happens next.

The true genius of tech leaders

Not about education, but this piece by Cory Doctorow is certainly about some of the folks who think they ought to be running education, and what the true secret of success might be (spoiler: it's not their superior wisdom about everything).

Young people need experiences that boost their mental health

Some unsurprising research results suggest that maybe tens need to get out and do stuff to lead fuller, healthier lives.

Who's left out of the learning loss debate?

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor writes for the New Yorker about the flap over school closings, learning loss, etc etc, and if you can bear to wade through all of this again, there are some good insights contained.

More than politics

Meanwhile, at Chalkbeat, Patrick Wall points to research that shows that no, school closings and openings were not all about politics after all. 

Inside the Struggle to Rebuild America’s Black Teaching Workforce

At EdWeek, Benjamin Herold takes a look at ab ambitious program to get more Black faces in front of classrooms. 

What next for New York Charter schools?

At Education Next. Yes, I know, but as with his book about Success Academy, Robert Pondiscio has written something worth reading regardless of your stance. 

Meanwhile, I was busy this week at Forbes with three new pieces:

--A look at how the pendulum swings on reading policy, and a new paper by P. L. Thomas that helps clarify the current state of the reading wars

--A look at a cool new data tool that shows what kind of educational opportunity your state offers, and also shows that Pennsylvania has the worst opportunity gap in the country.

--And check out a documentary film about the travails of the Chester Upland school district in Pennsylvania. 

"It's about the passion, not about the paper"

That exceptionally silly quote is from Robert Abel, the Dallas schools Chief of Human Capital Management (a silly job title). It comes from an AP article about the growing move to "ease job requirements" for teachers in many states. You will be unsurprised to learn that Abel has never taught in a classroom; he graduated with a BA in molecular biology and was, somehow, a Vice Principal in DeSoto, TX, three years later. 

But let's not pick on Abel, who simply articulated an idea that is not uncommon. Teaching is all about passion and being called and just, you know, caring real hard. Lots of folks are spouting this line these days, including, unfortunately, people who think they are supporting teachers. But if all it takes is passion, well, then, anybody can be a teacher. Anybody at all.

Doesn't that make sense?

I've been dragged into court. Don't get me one of those lawyers who has gone to school and studied and practice law for years--just get me someone who's passionate about courtrooms and lawsuits and stuff. 

My beloved partner needs a major operation on their spleen. Don't get me one of those surgeons who just has a bunch of papers from some med school--just get me someone who's passionate about spleens and cutting things. 

I mean, we have shortages to deal with. There's a nursing shortage--let's just start hiring people who are passionate about being around sick people. There's a truck driver shortage, but hey--let's just issue big rig licenses to anyone who has ever driven any vehicle and is passionate about traveling. There's a rural doctor shortage--let's just let anyone who's really passionate about working with sick people be a doctor. And there's actually a plumber shortage--let's just hire someone who's passionate about water to do the job.

What could possibly go wrong?

This is the same kind of baloney that some people spew about art, that one just has to feel real hard and art pops out, as if there is not a world of technique and skill and study and practice required to enable that artful popping. 

This is not about "easing job requirements." It's about redefining the job and thereby expanding the candidate pool. Ray Kroc did this for McDonalds by redefining "cook" as "somebody who flips a switch, drops a fry basket, and assembles a product according to instructions." Redefining the job gets you a larger candidate pool, which in turn lowers the cost of hiring or replacing people--you know, that pesky human capital. 

"Passion not paper" doesn't even make sense in this context, because people who are passionate about a pursuit generally direct that passion into action and study and growth. Imagine someone who says, "I am really passionate about playing the trombone, but I don't ever actually do it." 

Teach for America was founded on the premise of "passion not paper," except that only a small percentage of its temp workforce was actually passionate about teaching (as opposed to, say, being passionate about building their resume), and you can spot those people because they actually stayed and did the work to become real teachers. 

So I'm not sure exactly what slice of human capital Abel is talking about, which persons are out there saying, "I am really passionate about teaching, but I have not taken any steps in my life to pursue that passion." If someone tells you, "I feel very passionate about you, but not enough to call or see you or listen to you or spend time with you," are you thinking that person is relationship material?

Look, I'm not about to defend the current teacher prep pipeline as a flawless source of training. Some college teacher prep programs are crap. I also recognize that some schools (like the one in the story that hasn't had a qualified math teacher for a year) face dire situations that demand some kind of solution right now. I believe that programs that create a path for people who have worked in schools as support personnel and have come to love and respect the work can be a plus. And I have known second-career teachers who were good.

Does passion matter? Sure. It's passion that fuels the engine that gives you the strength to power through the hard work, the long practice, the deep study, the acquisition of skill, the will to navigate the crappy days--all the things that get you the paper. Passion, by itself, is not enough.

But I also know that (as the article acknowledges) the new bunch of unqualified pseudo-teachers are not going to end up in schools filled with students from wealthy white families. Redefining the teaching profession so that any warm body can be placed in a classroom is going to have negative effects (exacerbated because these unqualified warm bodies tend to have a high rate of turnover), and those negative effects are going to be felt by students on the bottom end of the socio-economic scale, the students who already get the short end of the stick. They don't need passion and heart and gooey excuses--they need people who know what the hell they're doing and can do it well.

How Does Educational Opportunity Look In Your State?

I want to direct your attention to a great new tool from Research for Action, a non-partisan nonprofit educational research outfit. They're based in Philly, and I've talked about their work before; they do good stuff. 

This new tool is the Educational Opportunity Dashboard, and it breaks down and crunches data from fifty states that comes from the 2017-2018 federal Civil Rights Data Collection, so it's all pre-COVID, but still interesting, and the dashboard is very easy to use.

The EOI looks at fourteen factors, grouped around educators, school climate and curriculum. It's not the exact list I would pick (in particular, I don't care about how many AP courses a school offers), but it's still instructive. 

You can see how states stack up against each other from various angles, like the gap for opportunities between different groups of students. For example, it turns out that Pennsylvania has a respectable level of average opportunity index, but when you look at the gap between white students and students of color, we're 50th in the nation. 

Beyond rankings, you can see state's individual scores. You can also break down each state's numbers for each of the fourteen categories and see how they compare to nation. For instance, in Pennsylvania we do better than the national numbers for certified teachers and experienced teachers, but are far worse when it comes to student-counselor ratios. 

Reformsters have insisted for decades now that we focus on "outcomes" ("deliverables") and ignore inputs, which suits them fine because they'd rather not have to deal with how underserved so many schools are. But it has led us to a situation where, as has been said many times, we're trying to make the pig gain weight by measuring it. But if you want the pig to gain weight--especially if you want to understand why Wilbur is gaining weight and Peppa is not, it only makes sense to check to see if they're both being given a full-sized meal. This dashboard is a step in that direction. 

It's a worthwhile tool to check out, easy to use, easy to read, and fully explained. RFA has done an excellent job on this; folks who are interested in the state of educational opportunity in the nation and their own home state will find it useful and interesting. 

Ben Carson Wants To Talk To Your Little Patriots

Ben Carson wants a piece of the Patriotic Education For The Youngs action, and what he's come up with for Little Patriots is...well, not awesome.

After he finished serving as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Trump. Carson created the American Cornerstone Institute, a sort of conservative thinky tank/advocacy group/instrument for pushing whatever thought is ambling through Carson's brain. It had a director of policy--Eric Blankenstein, who found then need to exit the Trump administration a bit earlier than Carson, but he appears to have exited in February. Otherwise, it's not clear that ACI is anything other than Ben Carson. 

Cornerstone touts this goal:

Guided by our cornerstones of faith, liberty, community, and life, we will strengthen the bonds that hold our country together by promoting conservative, commonsense solutions to the issues facing our society.

"We will create unity by selling our team's view" seems a bit counterintuitive, but in talking about ACI Carson has generally emphasized unity and peaceful communication. As with his years with the previous administration, Carson doesn't seem to quite get where all this divisiveness might be coming from, but give him credit--his message is not "We have to obliterate those evil bad guys on the other side." For a conservative in 2022, that's something. 

Incidentally, if it seems as if "cornerstone" isn't a more common part of political rhetoric in this country, that may be because one of the better-known historical "cornerstones" is the Cornerstone Address, in which Alexander Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, explained that the cornerstone of the new nation rests "upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."

It's a curious oversight on Carson's part, particularly since one of the things he/ACI wants to do is teach children history.

Whipping up patriotic instructional stuff has become a staple of the right, and Carson's entry that three-legged race is Little Patriots. 

The program appears aimed at grades K-5, and it emphasizes the four "cornerstones" in the quote above. It involves some fairly thin lessons and activities (from the K unit on Discovering America, "Have you ever wanted to find something new? You too might be an explorer.")

But the big central feature appears to be a series of animated episodes of Star Spangled Adventures. It looks like there are supposed to be 25 eventually; right now there are 4. 

The production crew for these episodes is not a bunch of amateurs. Producer/director Robert F. Arvin has done work in Hollywood on movies and TV shows you've probably watched, from Inspector Gadget to JAG to Shanghai Noon as a digital artist, working mostly on pre-visualizations. Writer Jeff Holder has worked in mainstream kids media as a writer and VP of development at Hanna-Barbera. Songs are by Bradley Skistimas whose most recent claim to fame is getting his defamatory song about Dr, Fauci taken down by Youtube. Main voiced actor Cheryl Felicia Rhoads has worked professionally for a long time. 

So these are people who are pros, and yet somehow, their finished product is not great. Consider Episode Four about the Declaration. 

Open with the theme, which sounds kind of like a C&W singer doing a John Wayne imitation. "So come on all you patriots, let's go."

The animation for these pieces is bobbleheaded and flat, like cut scenes from a 90s-vintage video game. And although animation allows us to go anywhere and see anything, most of this episode is set in a room with Thomas Jefferson sitting at a table (while his wife cleans up, serves guests drinks, and says encouraging things). 

The host for the series is Liberty, a giant eagle in a tri-corner hat, voiced by Rhoads as a sort of discount Angela Lansbury. The video underlines a theme that tensions and conflicts have been getting worse, and the only cause hinted at is King George's tyrannical belief in his divine right to rule. Jefferson is mad at that "plundering tyrant," all of which seems aimed at making it seem as if England is vastly different from the US and has no idea of representative government, no such thing as Parliament, etc. Nor has anything like the French and Indian War ever occurred, creating the debts at the heart of the taxation debate. You can say that's all too complicated for the K-5 crowd, and I don't disagree, but what you choose to include or leave out when you simplify tells us a lot about your message, and the message the  here is that the Revolutionary War was caused by a monarch mistakenly believing in a God-given right to rule when in fact only we understood what God really meant.

Writer Jeff Holder has a career in children's television, really, so I'm thrown by lines like reference to Thomas Paine's "salient points" or "yes, his discourse on role of government is brilliant" and "the magnitude of what we are saying is staggering."  There's a background jazzy score that just loops away without responding to what's happening, not even when we get to the "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" part that is a focus of the episode.  And then the eagle says "The world's may be old fashioned, but what they mean are timeless." And yes, that's a subject-verb agreement error. And before someone points it out, yes, I know it takes a good ten seconds to find an error within the confines of this blog, but I'm not a paid professional who has been typing for a living for decades.

We take a moment to explain that "all men" back then meant "all humanity" which...okay. And we are heavy on the God-given part. Also, leaning on "those who are governed are over those who govern." 

After Congress deliberates, we get a song that rhymes "get it done" with "independence." Then we get a scene of King George being hacked off about the Declaration while the eagle whispers incomprehensible pieces of it in his ear and he rants (and happy jazzy piano plays), because I guess doing something doesn't really count unless it upsets someone else. 

The eagle tells us that Jefferson always regretted that the Congress cut the part about slavery. But Congress thought it would cause more arguments, which is a clever way of skating past the fact that members of Congress were the ones arguing. But one theme of this series is the idea that the Founders were a united body, and not a bunch of squabbling men who had major disagreements about just about everything. This matters, because there's a huge difference between understanding ourselves as a nation founded on disagreement and compromise and understanding ourselves as a nation founded on one single inviolable Truth shared by unified founders. But Little Patriots leans on the second version all the way. Of course, the eagle does not mention that Jefferson kept human beings enslaved even as he called slavery an abomination. I don't care how young a person is--you are never too young to understand that people are complicated.

You'd better off showing the musical 1776.

There are some short slide-show style videos that are actually more watchable. There are also a couple of books that Carson co-authors with Valerie Pfundstein and which emphasize things like the Judeo-Christian values of our founding. 

Through lessons and cartoons rooted in our American history, the Little Patriots Program focuses on America’s four founding pillars: faith, liberty, community, and life, and celebrates all the values that make our country exceptional.

The whole program favors a simplistic view of our history anchored in religious faith and national exceptionalism and the awesomeness of entrepreneurial marketeering, with a few head nods to little corrections we made along the way (Jackie Robinson integrates baseball, and MLK Jr. leads some marches and says that character thing). There's a bibliography (the Kindergarten lessons are sourced mostly from the Brittanica online version). There is, at least, no apparent signs of the sort of "And then dirty socialists tried to undermine the work of our Founders" that other patriotic history curriculum are fond of. 

Not to mention irony, as when another video about liberty explains that it means "to follow a new and perhaps different path than others before you." As long as, you know, it's an acceptable right kind of different path.

I don't think Little Patriots is going to fix the nation. It may pad out the work for the private schools, homeschoolers, and grandparents that it's aimed at, but I can't imagine it benefiting actual children. Pass on this. 

ALEC's 2022 Education Goals

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is that special group that drives the legislative bus right over any pedestrian notions of how a bill gets to Capitol Hill. And they had some educational ideas for this year. Let's see how things are going.

ALEC is a special collection of legislators and business folks. The "exchange" in the title is a misnomer; mostly ALEC appears about well-placed business leaders getting to tell legislators what they'd like to see enshrined in law. Committees whip up "model legislation" which legislators than carry back to their own state to get passed (Sourcewatch calls it a "corporate bill mill"). ALEC is one reason that from time to time we see remarkably similar laws popping up at the same time all across the country.

So when ALEC says they have some items on their wish list, it's worth paying attention.

What did they want from the education sector this year? See if you recognize any of these priorities from a state capital near you. On their list of "essential policy ideas," under "Education and Workforce Development," we find the following:

Academic transparency to enhance parental rights

In fact, they've even got a model American Civics and History Act that would require all social studies instructional materials to be available online for parents to view, require schools to offer US history and government, and forbid anything that might force students to agree with a particular view on controversial subjects (so I guess no more expressing disapproval of kids wearing nazi paraphernalia or confederate flags). 

This one seems to be going well for them, with lots of states demanding some version of "no controversial subjects" and requiring both sidesism in class (like that school in Texas where teachers were told they'd better hit both sides of the Holocaust). 

Alternative credentialling

This item mentions how the certification process places undue burdens on teachers, which is an odd thing to say, since a person isn't a teacher until they've been certified and hired. But the real concern here is how a certification process can "limit the pool of qualified professionals." 

How much better to have a really large pool to choose from, because that would make the cost of such labor cheaper. Hence a whole lot of talk about the teacher shortage and how we can fix it by repeatedly lowering the bar so that any warm body can be put in charge of a classroom. For years, reformsters tried to McDonaldize teaching by pushing teacher-proof curriculum in a box, but recently we seem to have moved past that an on to just saying, "Screw it" and redefining the job requirements so that any human with a pulse qualifies.

Expanding educational freedom

"Education freedom" is a term that tests better with audiences than "vouchers," but that's what they mean. At the opening they were salivating over the impending Carson v. Makin case that, along with the Espinoza decision, would help blast a big fat hole in the wall between church and state. Big enough to drive a bus through, a bus full of money headed for your favorite "religious" school, while simultaneously getting closer to establishing education as a private commodity that you have to go purchase on your own in an unregulated marketplace that, like all marketplaces, offers a hell of a lot more to the rich than to the poor.

And wouldn't you know it-- ALEC has some model Education Savings Account (super-voucher) legislation for your use. Take a look--I guarantee it will look familiar, right down to the clauses guaranteeing "autonomy" for the participating vendors so that they won't have to abide by any of those pesky regulations that the government likes to throw around; they'll be free to discriminate to their hearts' content.  

Those are the big three for ALEC this year, and as you can see, it's been going pretty well for the quest to drive the bus right through the public school walls and just dismantle the whole thing. And if the bus in your state looks a lot like the bus in other states, well, now you have an idea why. 

High School Theater and Changing Genders

I came across this story over the weekend-- the Central Academy of Technology and Arts in North Carolina has drawn the ire of Moms for Liberty and other reactionary folks by staging a production of Jesus Christ, Superstar in which casting was done without any consideration for gender. 

I had several thoughts, including flashing back to my high school days in the early 1970s when Superstar was all the rage and was also stirring up all the rage. The title song was a radio hit and so many pearls were clutched , and then clutched even more when folks discovered that the single had King Herod's Song on the B side, which in retrospect strikes me as some top quality trolling, because taken out of context that song certainly seems a tad blasphemous. I also vividly remember that in the world of church youth ministries, Superstar was greeted with great enthusiasm. The JCS flap was my introduction to that phenomenon in which many people who get all offended on behalf of religion are not actually all that involved in the church. 

But mostly my thought was that gender flipping of roles in high school theater is not remotely new.

I've been involved in amateur and school theater for ages, and here's the thing. Shows are written with heavily male casts. But in school and community theater, mostly what you get coming out are females. School and community theater are, in some respects, harder on directors than a big Broadway production. In the pros, you can say, "For this part I want an actor who's 5'10" with blue eyes and blonde hair and can dance, act and juggle fire." In the school and amateur world, you get what you get, and you have to figure out how to make a show out of it. 

So you do what you have to do. I cannot even count the number of times I've switched role genders. Some don't make the slightest bit of difference--the narrator in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat could be anybody, or even a couple of anybodies. And why not older female authority figures, like Mr. Lundie in Brigadoon. I've done Once Upon a Mattress a couple of times; it's a great little show and it has a brace of main characters who can be either gender. It's also a great example of a show that's just more interesting if you mix it up rather than just using a stage full of male characters.

That's part of what you discover when you start casting women in roles originally written for men; it unlocks all sorts of cool stuff. Make Bell's crazy father into her crazy mother in Beauty and the Beast and all sorts of little things shake loose. 

I once directed an in-the-park production of Hamlet, costumed to look like a generation story in the sixties, and turned Laertes into Ophelia's older sister, and that creates some really interesting dynamics as well as adding a female character who's not a terrible mess (and don't come at me about "historical accuracy" in a work by William "I giveth not one fig for thy true historie" Shakespeare. 

Or a production of The Fantasticks in which the fathers are played by women playing men. Or the gazillion chorus members that have been asked to cross dress. The list goes on and on. Make the changes a few times out of necessity and you start seeing that musical theater's endless tendency to use male characters as a default setting deserves to be challenged and ignored.

That's really at the heart of all our arguments about gender and race in fiction--the long-standing idea that a straight white male is the default setting for all characters and you can have other types of characters only as long as you can make a case for them--but the straight white male is the character that you never have to make a case for. High school theater upends this by making a very simply case--not enough guys came out for this show--but once you've broken the habit, you can start thinking of casts without that default, and it opens a whole world of rich possibilities. 

(And that's before we even get to the "straight" default, which is not obvious to the audience, but how many young LGBTQ performers have come up playing straight characters on stage.)

CTA has a famously successful theater program; I suspect their decision had nothing to do with necessity and everything to do with opening up more opportunities and possibilities for their cast and production. I'll also bet dollars to donuts that none of the M4L crew has much experience with high school theater (not even as audience members) because to anyone who spends time in that world, cross casting is not a shocking new surprise. In that respect, necessity pushed high school theater productions ahead of the culture at large. No reason they shouldn't stay there. 

ICYMI: Applefest Edition (10/9)

Once a year, my small town transforms into the site of a three-day festival that is a combination of every craft fair you've ever seen, plus a race, plus a car show, plus food, plus a combination homecoming and fall festival. Our excuse is a tenuous connection to John Chapman (aka Johnny Appleseed) who lived in the area briefly before heading west, apple stuff in hand. But it is one of the big highlights of the year here, and a chance to run into all sorts of folks. This year we have the bonus of the twins, who are never not amazed and excited to see someone from school outside of school. 

Despite all that activity, I've still got a reading list for you. Remember to share your favorites. Amplifying voices is how the word gets out.

Big tech is co-parenting our children. Yes, be afraid. 

The New York Times looks at Susan Linn's "searing indictment of corporate greed" and the tech companies who target children, as well as the lawmakers who make it easy. 

Some Politicians Count on Teachers Staying Silent. We Can’t Afford To

At Education Week, Monte Bourjaily says it's time for teachers to speak up and push back against the wave of gag laws.

Tennessee charter school commission accused of 'enormous conflict of interest'

NewsChannel 5 out of Nashville has been all over the state's charter school shenanigans, including this story of how the state has handed charter advocates the power to overrule local government. 

An ever-growing disconnect

While we're talking about Tennessee shenanigans, it's useful to check in on Dad Gone Wild

Dallas Schools Turn to NFTs to Boost Student Engagement

From the file of Dumb Things That School Districts Buy Into. 

The Reckless Rankings Game

The Chronicle of Higher Education will only give you a couple of free articles, but this should be one of them. Akil Bello offers this scathing look at the U.S. News college ranking racket.

Gaming the school rating systems

Gail Sunderland notes that parents mostly like their schools, so reformsters have created school rating systems that are far more about politics than about education. 

Foot soldiers for Ron DeSantis: The right-wing money and influence behind Moms for Liberty

Nobody tracks dark money influences like Maurice Cunningham, and in this piece for Our Schools (this link will take you to LA Progressive, but you can find the piece in several outlets) he plays connect the dots with Moms For Liberty and entirely too many other of the usual shadowy players.

Book bans part of coordinated assault on public education

Jonathan Friedman of PEN America put out this op-ed explaining why there's more to worry about than just the book bans.

NC virtual charter schools continue to have poor performance yet high demand

In news that will come as no surprise to those who have been paying attention, North Carolina Public Radio discovers that the state's cyber-schools aren't very good at educating students.

Reading the College Board's 990

I'm sending you to Tik Tok this time, and a user whose whole thing is reading non-profit's federal 990 forms. This time she breezes through the College Board's form and golly bob howdy but do those folks make a ton of money. This includes David Coleman's salary. Yikes. 

A broke marching band parades on Capitol Hill to practice. Magic ensues.

There is perhaps more to unpack here than Lizzie Johnson at the Washington Post gets into, but it's still a cool piece, especially if you're a marching band person.

Meanwhile, over at Forbes, I took a look at the federal audit of the Charter School Programs grant program, which finds, once again, a hellacious amount of waste and mendacity. And I took a look at North Carolina's terrible merit pay plan and how it seems to have come via some shadowy backroom dealings.