Nurse Leverage

Kristen McConnell, a nurse with an opinion, got 5 minutes of fame last week, and I take exception to nearly all of it… starting with her using the fact that she’s a nurse in the midst of a pandemic to lend authority to getting out of her lane to preach to teachers about what they should do in the midst of a pandemic.

She can save that virtue signal. Nurse McConnell trained to be a nurse. Her job is, and always was, to go in and care for the sick. The risk of getting sick herself didn’t just become her job. It was her job last year and every year before that.

Well before the pandemic, she agreed to the risk of blood borne pathogens and infectious disease. There’s a reason why there are gloves and masks and biohazard containers all over her workplace. If she didn’t want to do that work she could change careers or chump out (She’s right. It’s the wrong word.) But, it was always the work.

Further, I take exception to being told to do work that is not mine to do. Nurse McConnell’s career choice is not a lever upon mine. Her duty is not our duty, and there is no equating them. It is not my duty to provide food for people. It is not my duty to provide free day care or mental health services or socialization. I was hired and trained to teach English… to help children see and grow their potential as readers, writers, speakers, and thinkers. (And now and then.. to help them to know the right word from the wrong one.) Those are the true confines of my work, and like many other workers in the pandemic, I can work from home.

It’s convenient for society to layer these other duties onto teachers as if they are ours, but they aren’t really. When I finish teaching English, I don’t provide day care, therapy and friendship circles until parents come home. I’m not hired for any of that, and I’m not trained for it, either. I don’t have responsibility for the economy, and I take exception to being told to do my work in an unnecessarily risky way for the sake of the economy. Nor, do I consider it my responsibility to shoulder the burden that belongs on government to provide for the public good during an ongoing world wide health crisis. I have a duty and responsibility to educate kids; It’s a big responsibility all by itself; it’s none of the rest of that.

So, it is a little disturbing to hear McConnell’s husband’s musing about having nothing to show for himself. He may be layered into the article for the extra ethos (I may not be a teacher, but my husband is.), but did he really do nothing this spring? I worked hard to teach those kids. In my own case, my clothes didn’t get washed, my meals didn’t get made, my husband didn’t get my time, my dog didn’t get my attention while I did what it took to get up to speed and educate. If Mr. McConnell’s got nothing to show for that time, or if he devalues that work, shame on him.

Second, what’s with comparing our work to the bravery of being a cashier? Working in a 40,000 sq ft supermarket watching adults move quickly through the space well distanced from you while wearing masks, using hand sanitizer when they enter and leave, sometimes standing in designated distances on line just to be allowed into the store and often going through self checkout is not incredibly brave. It’s definitely not as risky as spending all day in 400 sq foot classrooms full of kids who can’t leave, who touch everything, who won’t keep their masks on or stay in their seats or remember to not act like kids.

But the worst of his opinions is his opinion of a strike as “bowing out” and a bad example to children. What an unenlightened thing to say. Strikes are why doors aren’t locked in factories, why children don’t have to work at the age of 10, why toxic chemicals are ventilated, why safety and health regulations are in place, why workers aren’t regularly dying on the job. What is a better example for kids? If it’s too soon to come back, what should we do? Be willing to be used in any way, at any time, without complaint? Teach kids that their lot in life is to never to stand up to exploitation or lack of concern for their inherent, natural right to exist? Call them soldiers so that they can bravely go once more unto the breach, dear friends? I don’t think so. I would be proud to have a child know that I stand up for safe working conditions and that I don’t expect to go, nor to see them sent in their turn, into unsafe environments.

And so, I also take exception to Nurse McConnell’s characterization of teacher objections as nervousness or fear. It’s gaslighting, and her tone is patronizing… (it will be tough, teachers…but it will be okay…. you’ll bond and you’ve find out that underneath everything… you were really just afraid of failure… but no worries… teachers, you’ve got this.) Wrong.

Reasonable objections to unsafe conditions are not about being nervous. It’s about advocacy. I was not hired to go into an unsafe environment and risk my health, the health of my loved ones, or (let’s face that elephant in the room) the health of the community so that people can pretend that we can quickly go back to normal before there is a normal to go back to. I can’t yet sit socially distant in my doctor’s large L shaped waiting room. I’m not even allowed into the building to be with with my dog and his vet, but I can sit in a small, poorly ventilated classroom full of 11 year olds all day? I don’t think so.

It’s true that life brings circumstances you can’t control. And sometimes you have to be brave. I would take a bullet for a kid if I had to. I’m brave enough to protect an innocent life, but providing day care is a different category. There are things to die for and things not to die for. One is heroic; the other is just being expendable.

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Grief Anniversary

I don’t know if this is helpful.

The world shifts with the loss of your mother. It is forever divided into two parts… life with her in it and life without. She is changed by death, and we are changed too. It is impossible to be the same person.

The first weeks after she died was just animal pain… pacing inconsolably in a driveway trying to run away… make it not be true. Waking up with her loss always the first thought. I was as a small child stripped of her mother, and all I could do was keen and rock and look for her. I want my mother. I want my mother, still.

Then there was the miracle of the iPhone. I was grieving one morning in the week after she died when my phone with a darkened screen suddenly began playing a song by the Four Tops that was a kind of signature song for my mom.. Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch. She bought a small stuffed bear for my niece as a baby once that played that song. And, my mom would sing it to one or another of us over the years since. Suddenly my phone was playing that song. I cried out, but I took solace whether it was moment of grace or a soothing coincidence.

It will soon be five years since my mom died. Much has changed. One of my sisters is divorcing but also recovering from a long depression. My other sister is reaching out to stay closer as we age now that the glue of my mother no longer does that job. Somewhere out there a half sister died which I don’t connect to but is strange to know. My niece is now a 21 year old, non binary art major in college. And, I have lived a while without my mother in the world. I am no longer standing in the driveway trying to escape my skin. Most of the time, my grief is soft. I have accepted.

There are many grief anniversaries. Usually they are quiet, private times. Although, there are sudden sharper ones like when a stranger loses her mother and cries out in pain as she is forced to join… how did my friend put it?… that club that no one wants to be a member of. At such times, I am reminded of the guttural grief of the first days. Her pain is why I’m sobbing and grieving and writing today.

Mostly, the anniversaries are quieter more ordinary, more every day in their passing… like when washing my face. My mom used to wash her face with a washcloth every morning. It was a small morning abulation that she did without fail, a ritual performed both when she was vital and living life, and later when Parkinson’s was stealing everything from her. She would, throughout all of it, take an ordinary washcloth and with it in both hands, palms open, wash her whole face, somehow falling into it as a private pleasure. It was vivid even then when there was no thought of her eventual loss. Now, that she is gone, I think of her every time I wash my face

Whether I’m washing my face, or using a common utensil in my kitchen that I used so often in hers, it is a moment of remembrance… a little like grief, a little like grace. Often, in my head, I’ll smile a little, recognize her and say, “Hi, Mom.” And she will say, “Hi Honey.” Sometimes I carry on a small conversation. She’ll say, “It’s okay.. don’t worry.” And she soothes me. In these times, she is returned to me, whether in reality or as an echo. Is she with me, really really really.. as I hope? I don’t know. She refuses to stay in my head for discussions of an afterlife and momentary whispers of her dissipate like fog. I admit that am someone who can think Yes… she is there. My husband, the rabid atheist, holds his tongue.

But, in truth, it doesn’t matter which is true. I am reminded that love is eternal, even if we ourselves are not. Inescapable grief is balanced on scales by love. In this, we are fortunate.

Mom

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Today it’s about Michael Vick

To all the people who argue that Michael Vick did his time and paid his debt, I know. It’s hard for you. He was a great quarterback or whatever… But, he was also something else. Here’s your trigger warning.

If you want him to be honored as a captain… a leader that others should follow and admire, you are saying that leaders torture dogs that don’t perform well, that they hang them from trees to choke them to death, that they drown them, smash them to the floor over and over until a dog’s neck is broken. You’re saying that a leader that others should follow attaches electrodes to dogs they want to punish and kill, electrocuting them by throwing them in a pool where they don’t die right away but claw and tear the pool sides in a frantic and hopeless attempt to escape. You’re saying that a leader has an aggressive breeding bitch’s teeth pulled so he can breed her more easily. A leader uses pet dogs as bait dogs and grinds their teeth down with a dremel so they can’t fight back.

Are there other horrible things that people do? Yes, there are. But today’s topic is not those other horrible things. Today, it’s about Michael Vick. Can someone who actively participated in such inventive and wanton cruelty and terror be capable of remorse when he had not the slightest remorse through all the torture? It doesn’t seem very likely, but if he was the the leader that others should follow, and he felt real remorse, he would be demonstrating that leadership himself. He wouldn’t need people to petition. He’d have thanked the NFL and then politely and firmly rejected the honor as indecent under the circumstances.

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RIP John Taylor Gatto

John Gatto was my mentor teacher my first year of teaching in NYC circa 1990. I think he’d already been named NYC Teacher of the Year twice by that time although I didn’t know it. He would leave teaching the year after I knew him because “he didn’t want to hurt children anymore.” But I didn’t know that either. I was too busy.. too surrounded by my experience in my first year as a teacher in NYC to really see what else was going on. Mostly, I remember his room because there was next to no light, and the walls were so plastered with hand written posters detailing little pieces of his philosophy on them that you’d be hard pressed to find an inch of uncovered wall or window. I think he had 8th graders or perhaps 9th graders. Most of his kids were off on internships around the city which I later found out was one of his signature accomplishments. He didn’t have many kids there in the dark, and he didn’t seem to interact with them much. It might have been the days I came there, but I didn’t see life in that room. I think he was probably right to retire then.

My perception of John at the time was that he was at war with the whole idea of school, and he seemed less interested in what we should do to help educate and guide children than in what we should not do. His angst around around schooling was primarily focused on compulsion. He didn’t believe in it. He seemed to think that no one should have to do things they didn’t want to do which seemed a little corny granola to me. I wondered whether he thought that we would have running water, flush toilets, food that we didn’t have to scratch out of the soil, or roofs over our heads if no one did things they didn’t want to do. I considered his idea that the free, unfettered child in the natural state resolves all their own needs in their own time as a kind of unschooler, magical thinking (although I don’t think the word unschooler had been invented yet). Perhaps he was right and it would all work itself out… like wikipedia or an upside down bottle that rights itself in the water. Or maybe not.

All I knew at the time was that his classroom was dark, and that I was a minor inconvenience. His big advice for me was to get out of teaching before I became a part of tbe system that destroys children. I didn’t get a sense that anything he was doing was better than what I was about to do. So, I ignored his advice. I am now closing in on what may be my last years in the classroom. I’m where he was when he was my designated mentor. I wasn’t an unschooler then, and I’m not one now. Still, I’m sorry to hear that he died. He reminded me of an old war horse. Rest in Peace, John Gatto.

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Pondiscio is Right; Pondiscio is Wrong.

On Standards and Content

Pondiscio is right. He argues almost daily for standards in skill acquisition… often focusing on issues of early reading. He regularly calls for a return to explicit phonics instruction.(Right there with you, RP.)  Decoding as a fundamental part of learning to read. (decoding isn’t comprehension. It isn’t inference. But, that’s another discussion.)

Pondiscio also argues that content matters. (I agree!) Cultural, literary, artistic, scientific, historical, political, mathematical literacy is the bedrock of being educated.  Children must come to the adult table armed with the ideas and knowledge that informs their society past and present….all the writers, thinkers, philosophers, scientists, creators, leaders (living and dead, male and female, white and non white, the good, the bad, the feet of clay).   Those who argue nonsensically that nothing in particular needs to be taught, known or wrestled with because everything can be googled are fashionably wrong. They should be ignored.  Those who argue that we should dismantle education and teach our biases are even more fashionably wrong.  A functional society requires each generation to be grown on a solid and complex foundation of knowledge, critical arguments, ideas, and skills.  Their access should not be censored or curated for anyone’s end.  The end.

On the Value of Creativity

Pondiscio is wrong. In his 2015 review of Sir Ken Robinson’s book Creative Schools for Fordham Institute (recently amplified on twitter), he perversely argues against the importance of creativity in learning.  According to him, creativity is in opposition to standards and he derides it with a corny, back-to-basics mischaracterization of Robinson’s argument, wondering glibly where was the  “interpretive dance, semaphore flags, or other means to argue against standards and for creativity in education.”  This is nonsense, of course.

Creativity is not only NOT in opposition to standards or content, it is encompassed in several standards and includes the ability to combine, make connections, problem solve, research, think in analogy, make original arguments, compose, create, imagine.  Creativity is a central component of human intelligence not some separate frilly capacity that we just don’t have time for.  Arguing that it is fluff or a luxury is uncritical pendulum swinging.  It needs to be called out as such. You don’t have to choose between literacy and creativity. There is literally no opposition between these two good things.  They support and uplift one another.

The Problem is with the Pendulum

The problem is with the pendulum, Pondiscio.  If I may paraphrase… like many fine people before him, he fell victim to one of the classic blunders, the most famous of which is “Never get involved in a land war in Asia,” but only slightly less well known is this: you don’t have to pick sides in the discussion of ideas.  The antidote to pendulum swinging is to start from the premise that if all ideas are a la carte, you can disagree with someone on a fundamental level,  and still agree on some things. We can pick and choose from those ideas.

As it relates to the notion of creativity in the learning process, you might as well offer to tear education down to the studs as to actively seek to reduce opportunities to explore one of the fundamental attributes of intelligence.  You can be for both literacy and creativity, and you should be.  Both are part of learning and developing.  There is a fundamental goodness to children being able to create as well as consume content, to explore what they can discover as well as be told what has been discovered.  Young minds, like young bodies, are developed when exercised, and they are exercised by rehearsal, simulation, creation, invention and age appropriate self direction.  They need to practice and build these muscles just like they do any other skills.  You can bet that the hoi aristoi are not neglecting that muscle for their children. Let’s not neglect it for ours.  No child whose creative and inventive nature has been neglected is well positioned to compete with those whose creative and inventive natures have been nurtured.

So, that brings us to Robinson. He may have some good ideas. But, first we would have to know what they are. In his review, Pondiscio tends to mischaracterizes them. He errs by going for clever over critical.

He begins his mischaracterization with a snarky observation that Robinson uses capitalization and punctuation to write his book.  This is true. Robinson uses mechanics. But what is not true is Pondiscio’s implication.  He is arguing that Robinson’s vision does not include mechanics for others. It’s not an incisive or fair critique because nowhere in Robinson’s well punctuated book does he say that there is no purpose to learning how to use a period.  Worse, he argues the opposite.  He explicitly calls for the study of the Language Arts which he enumerates including the skill of literacy which he defines as , “...knowing the skills and conventions of reading and writing..” (143)  He adds that Language Arts should include public speaking, literary analysis, and writing. Seems sensible.

Pondiscio then tosses off a list of issues that he mostly doesn’t address… labeling them as merely an “anti reform jukebox.”  Loaded language is not an argument; it’s a dog whistle. Disappointing.

He does take the time to address a few minor points. He ridicules Robinson’s characterization of the  “standards movement” as unaware of the real state of the classroom in 2015, which was, according to him, all about differentiation and group work. I don’t know what was going on over at Democracy Prep in 2015, but in the public schools I am familiar with…  teaching was drowning in acronyms.  CCSS, HST, AYP, APPR, VAM, NCLB.  John King was Commissioner. RTTT was raging. CCSS testing had begun in New York two years earlier and was literally everywhere in 2015.  The biggest push for “differentiation” I saw in 2015 was a pull out for kids who were on the border between level 2 and level 3 so we could test prep the snot out of them. We experienced a steady diet of direct instruction and test prep in response to the underfunded, punitive federal mandates of NCLB and RTTT. Group work? What was that?

Pondiscio also finds fault with Sir Ken’s central argument that children are “natural born learners.”  He argues that this defies “what cognitive science tells us about how knowledge and practice drive skill and competence.”  No, RP. It doesn’t. This is just more pendulum swinging.  In what sense is the natural condition of being a learner at odds with the fact that it takes practice to build competence?  There’s no disagreement.  Children are natural born learners, and knowledge and practice drive skill and competence.

He has an issue with Robinson’s analogy that “education like organic gardening [consists] of creating the best conditions for children to learn and develop in.”  I suspect that this is just a stylistic objection. He finds it fatuous and simple. I hear you. It is a bit folksy granola, but if you boil that out, whether to agree or not depends on only what Robinson means by best conditions.

What is Robinson pitching?  We could just whistle to our dogs that it’s the whole child. But, let’s not err on the side of not making the point. What does whole child mean?  Roughly it means to consider also the well being of the child who spends half of waking hours with us. The question for the pendulum swinger is this:  In what sense does concern for the “whole” child signal the opposite of concern for the intellectual development of that child? It doesn’t.

And that brings us to the question that remains unanswered.  What is warmed over and fuzzy according to Pondiscio?  What would he have us remove from the whole child list to make our school more of a lean, mean, educating machine?  Wrap around services? Leveraging student interests and affinities? Engagement? Working with natural curiosity? Different pathways to graduation for different student? Sense of community and being cared about by the adults who serve you?

Even in a skim, some of Robinson’s areas to cultivate seem well considered unless Pondiscio is suggesting that care for children is some sort of privileged state of nature that we (aka teachers teaching working class children) don’t have time for.

His less than forthcoming review is a short back-to-basics drumbeat that “schools have existed to transmit—consciously and unconsciously—the language, knowledge, and values of their societies at any given time and place.”  I agree! Although, which values to leave our children with is hotly debated in every given time and place. So… does he also mean deciding who gets to decide what is valued?

Where is his actual disagreement? Hard to say. For the most part, Pondiscio’s review is a quick dive into a pool of snarky ad hominem.  (“Nod your heads like, yeah.”) He doesn’t say much about Robinson’s points, and he sums up with the observation that “thinking creatively about schooling” is a luxury afforded to the educated. Hmm.. perhaps getting to write, have opinions, and be read about education in public spaces is the luxury.

But, I’ll bite.  In what respect is it a luxury to improve the way we deliver content and engage students? By luxury does he mean that it’s something frivolous… to be afforded only by those who can afford it?  Okay. In what world is it too much trouble to engage students in creatively working with words, numbers, ideas, things and information?  Surely we want these things for our own children. Are other people’s children not our children for the purposes of teaching them? Don’t all children need support, opportunities, character development, a place and a way to grow interests, a sense that they are cared for, accepted, access to the human drives that make life worth living?

If not the children he would teach, who among children should receive an education that prepares them for participating in the creation of culture?

After all, you can do all of the above and still teach phonics.

 

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Letter to Vinson on Facebook

Screen Shot 2018-11-17 at 11.52.16 AMVinson and I went back and forth on this image on facebook. He says basically… don’t trip and re-elect Trump. You may have to hold your nose. To which I say this: (ps… This is not about HRC. I voted for her in the general election.)

Dear Vinson,

Please accept my apologies for being so strident in my responses. It’s frustrating to attempt to communicate about complex issues that are not well understood. But, here goes.

There is an organized and extremely well funded attack on public education happening in this country and abroad right now. It is not a single issue but an intersection of issues that are foundational to democracy and to most people’s concept of social justice. Compromising on it would be like compromising on Jim Crow or McCarthyism. It can’t be done.

You can enter the issue at multiple points. You can be opposed to social darwinism applied to children… who gets funded classrooms and who doesn’t. Or at coercive “free” market notions of choice… in which state and federal education policy is determined by a shadow govt of empowered consultants who are neither elected nor accountable for their failures. Or at the point of defunding by design… in which there are no viable choices other than the ones chosen for you but you are free to choose badly. (Libertarian paternalism) You can enter on the rise of authoritarianism in the growing charter sector in which neither parent, nor child, nor teacher has agency in the educational process of next generations. You can enter at the site of structural inequity or opposition to k12 profiteering by providers and investors (in both the for-profit and non profit k12 charter sector). You can enter at the intersection of consumer protection against misleading claims and market based policies that injure children who are viewed as raw materials to accept or reject. (I wrote about here: http://www.stonepooch.com/ablog/mission-accomplished/ I hope you’ll read it)

Sure, charters may be able to be reformed and regulated, but as they exist today, most of them cannibalize the school districts they inhabit and steal from the public. Some charters are used to re-segregate and others create a two tier system in poor communities in which the undesirable child gets an underfunded public school. When per pupil funding goes to charters, it increases class size for public school children, steals resources, and removes enrichment and services like art, music, librarians, social workers, nurses from the public schools that can no longer afford them. Infrastructure can be stolen or co-located (usually to the detriment of the public ed child.) Most charters are at liberty to take the students they want and dump the ones they don’t. They engage in well documented harassment of children and families they’ve taken by accident. They take dollars and often close without giving dollars back. They can use tax dollars to pay for private properties that stay with the provider and do not belong to the public. They can be nominally not for profit and engage in no bid contracts with their profit arm. They are aided by politicians who get campaign dollars from a donor class that wants public education to be a market in which the public funds private investment and the public takes all the risk.

Some will say… well if the children get a better education… but for all those well-funded and powerful fingers on the scale, most charters are no better than public schools, and many are far worse. There are good reasons that the NAACP has asked for a moratorium on new charters and that the ACLU has joined a case against charter exclusionary practices. Children are cash cows in an unregulated, self interested charter industry funded by conservatives and aided and abetted by DFERs. As for successful charters that warm hearts… until charters are regulated as a class and their parasitical relationship to public schools resolved, it doesn’t matter if an individual charter is successful. That charter could have been a public school. http://friendsofpubliced.org/charter-school-experiment-has-failed-concludes-national-investigation/ and here https://networkforpubliceducation.org/2017/01/charter-school-failures-scandals-occur-nearly-every-day/

Unfair Labor Practice

The attack on public education is also about unfair labor practices using scapegoating and deprofessionalization of teaching. A democratic establishment that supports practices that turn their constituents into an insecure, exploitable labor force has no standing. Working people have a right to have fair treatment and conditions in their workplace. Charters that open in closed schools NOT only do not take the teachers, they also DO NOT TAKE THE KIDS from the schools they closed. They brazenly declare improvement even though they have dumped both the unwanted children and the union teachers and staff. All they really accomplish is infrastructure theft. The biased research on dumped kids argues that it’s no injury to those kids because they “did no worse than they would have”… cynically… they were expected to fail and just did it somewhere else. No harm, no foul. Teachers in NYC who end up rubber roomed are smeared by the rubber room even if their only failing was to work in a high needs school with infrastructure that someone had an eye on. The charter may then exploit an inexperienced teaching staff and engage teacher churn to drive costs low and profits high. https://thehill.com/opinion/education/411750-charter-schools-uberization-of-teaching-profession-hurts-kids-too.

Schools such as Success Academy (KIPP, Achievement First, etc etc) go after infrastructure and lie about their accomplishments. Who benefits? In the case of Success Academy, their first graduating class graduated only 20% of entering. Their HS had a teacher attrition rate of 70% of teachers in 2018. I might also note that this lack of succcess didn’t impact the success of Success Academy CEO Eva Moskowitz who was paid $782,000 in 2016. She remains a favorite of the ed reform movement and the uninformed or colluding donors who feather her nest (including funding a foundation set up entirely for the purpose of pumping her personal salary by 300). Moskowitz is a big donor to the political campaigns of Mayor and Governor.

DFER candidates are not part of any potential reform to the charter sector. I spoke about Cory Booker but he is only one example. His high profile camera ready outrage on all the easy positions and his smarmy twitter persona makes him appear like a good guy, but he actively supports dismantling of public education through charters and vouchers. His brother ran a for profit charter chain (voucher connection right there) in Tennessee that failed its kids for years before its charter was finally revoked in 2016. Now, courtesy of Cory no doubt, Cary is the lead education policy “expert” for New Jersey governor Murphy. That’s no surprise. In ed reform, if you stay the course on privatization, it doesn’t matter how incompetent or corrupt you are.

I will withhold my vote for that kind of candidate because on a sinking ship, I will not grab a stone to save myself.

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Theory

Theory:

schools benefit from more
and from stability
and shared decision
and making.
and needs fulfilled
and continuity of vision
which can’t happen

where positions are
primarily
tools
to get to
the next,
and the next,
and the next,
and the next,
and the next
and the next position.

Short timers
politicians
invested
in dogs and pony
show.

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antithesis and the facts of life

America is a bi-partisan members only club

You count as a fetus but not as a kid.

You count as a kid but not as a worker.

You count as a young worker but not as an old worker.

You count when you’re dead if it sells our agenda

The end.

 

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Mission Accomplished

At a Teach for America fundraiser,  DFER politician and then Colorado Senator, Mike Johnston, tells a story that will be brief because (he jokes) he doesn’t want to keep his audience from dessert.  He launches into a narrative about a scrappy, young, founding principal who beat all the odds because he believed in truth and hope. Johnston’s story is peppered with the names of students and their stories. Over the course of 21:53 minutes, we meet Tasha, Flavio, Jermaine and Travis (the 44th kid).  He weaves from story to story and then back to how he and others (mostly TFA alums) fight against a system that has been catering to “an old set of interests with a wrong set of priorities,” and he ends  by telling an eager, young audience that they are the army who, through sheer force of will “…would hoist America onto its shoulders and carry it across the water…” 

What Johnston is saying at that moment (without a shred of irony) is that what America needs most is to be saved by an army of over-privileged youth right out of selective college who will move, with all deliberate speed, into positions of influence and power and more privilege.  To return to the 2010 ed reform documentary, they are the Supermen that America has been waiting for, and they will, through sheer force of will (and a rehabilitated mid 20th century vernacular), fix all the things. The message is classic trickle down theory:

More privilege for the over-privileged helps the underprivileged.

The first story of his narrative is about the first day in his new school, The Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts (MESA). On that day, Johnston takes all his new 9th and 10th graders up to a football field, puts them in a circle, and tells them why he’s there. He says,

What we know right now is if we look at the data from this neighborhood… what we should do is take half of this circle right now and send you home because what we know is the data tells us half of you will never graduate from high school. We could do that… (pause) We’re here because we believe that something dramatically different is possible… if you are willing to come in here and give this your best every day… not only will you graduate from high school, you’ll graduate with admission to a four year college in your hand and with money in your pocket to pay for that degree.

The audience claps, but the kids didn’t believe. Their parents didn’t believe. His superintendent “didn’t believe, as well.” (smirk at 2:14)   No one believed… But, he did it.

Only he didn’t.

And here is where Johnston’s embedded disclaimer does it’s job. He’s not going to get caught on the fine point. He freely admits that he’s had more failures than successes. In fact, he’d tell that much longer story (if dessert wasn’t waiting) because “…it is not at all a silver bullet story…” (7:13)

But, it is a kind of bullet.

At this moment, you might think that this is a story about Mike Johnston.  It isn’t. Johnston is just one name put to one story. You might call him Travis (the 44th kid) of ed reform. He is not unique.  His story is typical of young, privileged, socially committed soldiers conscripted to a wrong set of interests and a wrong set of priorities.  This is a story about the 45th kid.

Facing the Harsh Truth

Toward end of his speech, Johnston asks his audience to face the harsh truth. Here’s a harsh truth. In order for Johnston’s school to become the first public school in Colorado history to graduate 100 percent of its seniors with acceptances to four year colleges…  40 percent of his juniors had to leave without a HS diploma. What dessert interrupted was that Johnston’s success came at a high price that was paid by others.

This isn’t to say that Johnston didn’t do some good during his short tenure as principal. He did. If you add back the 40% of juniors who disappeared from the senior roll, Johnston shepherded in a modest, but commendable 10% increase in the graduation rate for his group.

However, modest improvements don’t sell privatization, unfair labor practice and fast track careerism… all goals in the private interest that are sold alongside the goals of the public interest. Ed Reform makes serving a private interest virtually indistinguishable from serving the public one.  It becomes easiest for a rising star to make the pragmatic, commonplace choice to accept whatever half truth or lie of omission keeps the train running.  So, 40% of juniors have got to go.  But, this article is not about Johnston. It is about other stakeholders: the 45th kids, the families that love them, and the teachers that teach them. And, it asks one question about removing a large share of a junior class.

Who is being served?

Reformers steeped in the tea may say, you’re focused on the wrong set of priorities. Focus on the kids who are going to college not on the ones who aren’t. (hmm.) You have a deficit mindset.  These incredible young men and women are beating the odds, and all you want to do is stain their success.

Nope. It’s not their stain. Celebrating the personal success of students going off to college does not require  celebrating the fake success of a business model.  Students going off to college deserve all the accolades, but their interests are not served by the disappearance of 40% of their peers at the end of 11th grade. The only interests that are served by a school’s 100% Forever Mission Accomplished party are the private ones… the career of the rising star, the reputation of a school network, the agenda of the wealthy donors that fund them.

Who is not being served?

In 2008, MESA disappeared 40% of the 11th grade before senior year.  They were not served. MESA continues to this day to boast a 100% college acceptance rate among their seniors even though they have a 7% proficiency rate in Math and a 22% proficiency rate in English (as of 2018).  Urban Prep (2015) disappeared 60% of their entering 9th grade and 33% of the remaining junior class.  They boast 100% Forever. It won’t be difficult to accomplish using their method.  Success Academy (2018) disappeared 68% of their entering class. NorthStar (2006) in Newark disappeared 74% of their entering class. Only 26% of their students were served. Similar stories can be found all over the charter networks.  Urban Prep (2016) in Chicago,  Yes Prep in Houston. Kipp in New York City.  Achievement First in New Haven.

Some will rightly say that Public schools  fake graduation data, too. They do.  They send kids to night schools or alternative schools, and it must be called out with the same vigor.  But, let’s be honest.  A traditional, locally controlled public high school can’t disappear 74% of their entering 7th grade or 40% of their junior class.  That would leave way too large a trail of grumbling parents. Parent oversight, educator agency, school board accountability, and community control makes such a policy of disposal impossible.

It is where there is little oversight and low stakeholder agency, where a disposing institution is aided and abetted by private interests, that a policy of disposal can become widespread. We can and should celebrate each and every one of the kids who graduated from these schools and still rebuke the powerful lies of omission that puts a more successful face on a less successful fact. Here’s why it matters.

A muscular lie detracts from honest achievement.

Faked superior performance in education is analogous to the use of steroids in sports.  It normalizes fantasy achievements which make real achievement look paltry by comparison. It’s hope without truth. Whether it’s practiced by charters like Urban Prep, by a small new high school like MESA, or by a neighborhood public high school, steroid success ups the ante and puts the pressure on all schools to report and celebrate misleading results.

It’s bad for kids.

These are not selection schools that don’t take the child who isn’t a high achiever. These aren’t private schools whose parents pay handsomely for the privilege of exclusion. These are taxpayer funded public schools that advertise that they take all kids and yet can, at their discretion, dispose of any and all of them at any point in their school career.

Removing 11th graders so you can say 100% Forever isn’t just bad for the invisible kids who aren’t good for brand. It’s bad for the kids who are. The premise is wrong: It’s the school’s responsibility to be right for the child, not the child’s responsibility to be right for the school.  And not the public’s responsibility to choose from a portfolio of potentially all mediocre choices.  Further, the acceptable students learn, as their peers quietly disappear one after another, that they are products and only as valuable as they are useful to their brand. Once learned, that’s a lesson that keeps on giving over a lifetime.

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It’s bad for parents

Marketing and the use of misleading data requires that all parents be savvy consumers of information. One would think that truth in advertising laws would protect parent consumers from misleading advertising (much like we expect food to list all their ingredients or pesticides to post warning labels); however, networks are free to leave off the full information parents need in order to evaluate a school. Parents are required to find the data and crunch it for themselves in one of the most important choices they will ever make for their child.

Apologists for this practice will drag out the ed reform talking point script.  “We trust parents to make the right choice for their child.” and, invariably, they will resort to the implied racism trope (always an ed reform favorite).  “We know which parents YOU think can’t make decisions for their own child.”  What they won’t do (for all their anti-racist rhetoric) is put truth in advertising before their splashier claims.  They don’t list how many of an entering class remains or how many of their juniors they offloaded. The obligation to recognize misleading claims is placed squarely on the backs of the consumer parent.

It’s bad for policy.

Quaker Oats and other oat based cereals recently tested with  high levels of glyphosate  in parts per billion (ppb). Oats either harm your child or save her depending on whether oats are healthier than the difference between an acceptable level of 160 ppb and an average level of 930 ppb in your child’s body. PepsiCo and General Mills will resist this data. They have products to sell, so they will attempt to influence your choice of product with their hefty marketing budget. You may see one ad after another selling happiness, clean living, well appointed kitchens and Cheerios. You may never even hear about the glyphosate (unless you have a pesky facebook friend), but if it turns out down the road that the extra roundup in your breakfast cereal is a harm, your family will bear the costs of misleading marketing, denial and omission.

Screen Shot 2018-08-20 at 1.31.39 PMThe fine print on the a la carte portfolio model is that misleading marketing is a predatory but acceptable business practice.  The consumer is expected to do their own homework.. even when they aren’t scientists or education industry insiders.  Parents are free to believe™. They are free to vote with their feet, but they are not free to resist, regulate or constrain. The onus is on the parent to figure out where the truth is in the claim and pay the consequences of any mistake.

As a result, a disposing school can remove as many students as they wish to fulfill their 100% Forever claim.  They can hold onto non-disruptive kids and use their per pupil dollars for years and still not return a high school diploma.  They can create a culture of winners (who gets to stay) and losers (who’s got to go).  They can use fake data to suggest that superior performance is a result of at-will employment, ending due process, high class size with exceptional teachers, blended learning, daily test prep,  low community agency, mayor controlled school systems, two hour bus rides to school, high but unpublished attrition rates.  They can dump any educator, any child, any parent who displeases them and effectively dampen protest and oversight. They can maintain a parasitical relationship to living public schools and return only those students who they do not prefer. They can pursue instability with no concern for the people they are supposed to serve.

All of these are the bad policies of more privileged people on the backs of less privileged people… the kids that are removed or taught in test prep factories, the teachers that labor every day under a cloud of undeserved censure, the schools that are shamed by fake data, and the users and benefactors of public education itself. The mission is not only NOT accomplished, it is subverted and harnessed to an entirely different mission serving the oldest set of interests and the wrong set of priorities.

 

Posted in charters, Education Policy, Educational Reform Movement, public policy, Social Justice, Teach For America | 4 Comments

For poems apologized for

I have had the grace to be in the right place at the right time. Or maybe, if I reflect back on it, and on poems apologized for in the Nation, I might have to say that I was really just in the right place and the right time for me. I wrote this memory before I read the poem, but it does occur to me… Who knows what it is or how it feels or for how long it feels to be the one with the hand out in a subway station?

I was living in NYC. It was in the 90s when homelessness was everywhere on the street. (The city wasn’t as rich then.) I had gone into the subway station and was about to go down the stairs to catch the 1 2 3  train. And there, next to the staircase was a tall skinny homeless guy standing with a sign and a container for change. Just standing there. Maybe he said something as people went by or maybe he didn’t. I don’t remember.

It wasn’t like me to do what I did, then. But, I stopped. I pulled out some bills and went over to him. Instead of putting the money in his cup, I grabbed his hands with both of mine, pressed the money into them and and looked him in the eye and just said, “Don’t give up on yourself.”  I had no idea why I said it. I had no intent or thought when I did.  What did I know about what he thought or what he held onto, or what he gave up?

As soon as I said it, I turned around and left.  In part, I didn’t want to invade his privacy or require anything of him or impose myself upon him.  I didn’t want him to feel like he owed me a response,  and I also didn’t want to know more.  It was his response that made it something I would remember. As I was going down the stairs, I heard him cry out…“I won’t. I won’t.” It was a heartbreaking, piteous cry… a promise made by drowning man who had just grabbed onto something and my heart felt pain and joy.  It was a gift to think that I actually might have helped someone have a little more strength for being that day.  Maybe it’s just about who I think I am, but I think about the him as I remember him and hope that he, whoever he was to himself, gathered strength get to the next landing.

Posted in personal | Comments Off on For poems apologized for