The Elevator Is Broken

Elevator Out of OrderOur school elevator was finally replaced. It’d been unreliable for over a decade now – breaking down regularly, making suspect noises even when working, and generally scaring off all but the neediest passengers… of which there were still quite a few.

It took years of analyzing and advocating, months of allocating and approving, weeks of R.Q.-ing and P.O.-ing – but eventually actual work could be done. While the replacement wasn’t entirely NEW, it was DIFFERENT. It went up and down with some consistency. The buttons even lit up when you pushed them!

That is, until yesterday. When school started. It stopped and wouldn’t go no more. Period. 

In the midst of the chaos of the new school year, some of the most capable and over-qualified administrators in the state had to stop and figure out how to accommodate a dozen students and staff who for various reasons absolutely rely on the elevator to get from floor to floor.

Turns out it’s not ‘broken,’ exactly. 

Internal sensors detected the lack of a required safety switch – several weeks into actual usage – and shut it down. 

The switch is thousands of dollars – money NOT discussed, allocated, approved, R.Q.-ed, or P.O.-ed. And, thanks to the intricacies of state law, county codes, local regulations, district policies, bid processes, contract specifications, and a half-dozen other layers of red tape, no one is actually responsible in any way for whether or not the switch exists or the elevator actually works.

So the process begins – the discussions, the fiscal juggling, etc. Phone time. Emails. Best case, the first several stages are ready for approval by the next monthly board meeting. 

It will get fixed, eventually. Kids will miss classes and employees will waive their rights under ADA, but one day it WILL elevate again. What can’t be recovered are the man hours and lost focus spent on something that (a) shouldn’t have happened, and (b) no one person or group has the power to prevent – meaning there’s also no accountability.  

The system is all-powerful. 

Curriculum CommitteeSeveral years ago, I was on a committee in a state which shall remain nameless, during a phase in which Common Core was going to save us all. (This was a few short years before Common Core was going to destroy us all.) 

The goal was to revamp state curriculum to make room for the time-intensive skill-building advocated by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. It was (correctly) presumed that we could not maintain our already bloated content standards AND expect teachers to legitimately commit to the kind of analytical reading and evidentiary writing called for under the new priorities. 

We gathered in an atmosphere of revolution. Renewal. This was it – nothing was sacred! Old things had passed away; all things curricular would become new!

As various overhauls were proposed, it was revealed that the state had already invested zillions of dollars in the test bank from which the various high stakes exams are assembled. Creating new ones would require months of writing, more months of review, seven layers of approval and revision by thousands of stakeholders, costing millions of dollars, and culminating in the sacrifice of several newborns and a red-headed virgin to a deity named ‘Zuul’. 

In short, overhaul the entire curriculum – as long as the state could still use the same test questions at the same grade levels. 

No one in charge saw this as particularly limiting; in their world such neutering of all hope was the norm. They were bewildered at the Negative Nancies who saw this as more than a minor inconvenience – a feature, more than a frustration. Let’s keep a positive attitude! Enough nitpicking – let’s get started!

By the time we’d wrestled for two and a half days culling the content standards, they’d grown by roughly half-a-page per grade level. THEN we added the Common Core standards. They, at least, are still there – although under more rhetorically friendly headings.

It was proclaimed an amazing victory and a huge improvement thanks to the hard work and radical rethinking done by all. 

The resources and man-hours invested to make everything mostly-the-same-but-slightly-worse (a) shouldn’t have happened, and (b) can’t be fairly blamed on any one person or department. No one may be held genuinely accountable. 

The system is all-powerful. 

Last one. I promise.

Black Male TeacherMy district is in dire need of qualified teachers of color. Most districts are. The state has expressed a similar concern, along with bewilderment about what could possibly be done. It’s a subject of much discussion and some emotion. 

I had a paraprofessional for one of my low-performing classes last year. Strong Black male. Great mindset towards education and towards kids. Street savvy enough to have credibility with those so-inclined, but professional enough to pull kids of all colors and backgrounds into the light with his strong personality, his obvious love for them and for learning, and his lack of pretense.

His content knowledge was workable, and growing. I wasn’t worried – most of us learn our subject matter best by teaching it. Besides, for the kids with whom he was having the most dramatic impact, the ability to analyze technological improvements during the Civil War or cite from memory major cases involving the Establishment Clause wasn’t really a priority.  

He took his certification test and fell short – but not by much. No worries… he’d do better next time. Another season of study and preparation and hustle, above and beyond the time spent in school all day, with family at home, and working his two other jobs – because this, he believed, was his calling. These were his kids.

He took the state test again and missed certification by one point. 

A few phone calls put him in touch with some dear lady at the State Department who explained that the computer software which graded his essays didn’t like how often he’d repeated certain words and that he hadn’t varied his vocabulary or some such thing. She encouraged him to try again.

He moved on. 

I’m not suggesting we lower our standards, but a person didn’t reject him by a point – an algorithm did. I’m guessing it didn’t factor in our desperate need for strong teachers of color, intelligence, and the ability to reach kids… even if they don’t write quite whitely enough for the software developers as they change those lives. 

Losing him was completely unnecessary. It (a) shouldn’t have happened, and yet (b) no one person or office could have circumvented the bureaucracy involved even had they wished. 

The system is all-powerful.

Kudzu CarWhy, with the hundreds of studies, books, charters, and breakthroughs, can’t we change anything of substance in public education? Why can’t we implement even those things widely acknowledged to be good for kids? 

Why is it, with all the talk, the rallying, the hand-wringing, and the bluster, nothing seems to fundamentally evolve?

There are multiple factors – some personal, some logistical, and many economic. But chief among them, I belligerently suggest, is the maze of paperwork and policies on a dozen levels which make it impossible for anyone to simply DO anything useful. No one’s in charge, therefore no one’s capable… or accountable. 

The nightmare of red tape purported to prevent anyone from doing anything bad, anytime anywhere, is far more effective at preventing us from being particularly helpful. It’s against the rules. The one thing at which bureaucracy excels is perpetuating and growing itself to the expense of all else.

We are smothered in procedure and policy so tangled as to preclude substantive progress. Unless we find the will and the means to destroy the roots of this systemic kudzu, our continued efforts to prune or pretty up the results will continue to be futile. 

The elevator is broken. 

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State Testing: The Ultimate Solution

The Answer Is 42

Oklahoma is rewriting standards for the 143rd time in the past decade – each time ‘raising the bar’ even higher than the time before, we are assured. National struggles continue over Common Core in all its manifestations and retitled remnants. Should we move to the ACT to save money? Is it better to grade writing exams with crappy software or crappy temps rounded up on Craigslist? Should we punish 3rd graders for not developing at a pace of our liking? Stop high schoolers from graduating for their test scores? Devalue teachers who take on tough classes and work in the most challenging districts? The rhetoric alone gives me a headache.

We’re can’t even agree on WHAT we should be measuring – which subjects, which skills, and at what level. Should we one day solve that (we won’t), we’ll still have to reach some sort of consensus HOW we can evaluate whatever it is with any sort of accuracy or consistency (we can’t) – and all at lowest-bidder prices.

Fear not, my Eleven Faithful Followers – for I am about to reveal to you the final truth regarding this matter. I am confident my solution is both eloquent and attainable, for that is how I roll. You might want to sit down for this.

To hell with the tests.

End of the World

Seriously, $&%# ‘em. I refuse to care about them one way or the other anymore. I’m tired of watching good teachers with missionary zeal end up stressed out and derailed due to the pressure of some stupid state test and its randomly shuffled cut scores. I hereby revolt against the entire process.

Parents are already opting out in some places, and a few brave teachers in Tulsa Public have refused to administer anything they believe is bad for their kids. I applaud each and every one of them. 

But what I’m instituting is more basic. Starting today, we universally refuse to worry about tests or testing. When they happen, they happen. Our kids will do well, or they won’t. Our schools will shine, or they won’t.

We must no longer give even tiny little damns. 

You didn’t go to teacher school to improve test scores – none of us did.  You, like the vast majority of your peers, signed up to save the world – or part of it, anyway. You became a teacher because you love kids, and history, or music, or art, or math, or literature, or some other life-altering something. You signed up because you care.

Silly idealist.

You may teach a high stakes, heavily tested subject, or something marginalized as ‘extra-curricular’. Maybe you coach, or sponsor, or organize, or publish. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you just show up and teach your tired old butt off every day and that will just have to be enough. 

But you signed up to make a difference. You signed up to teach kids. 

So let’s teach. Let’s love our kids where they are and who they are, without concern for where they stand in relation to someone else’s legislative pablum. We’ll challenge them, and push them, and demand great things of them no matter WHAT their circumstances or gifts – but I’m no longer willing to frame anything important in terms of state standards or national goals. I’ll work for my clueless lil’ darlings, and I’ll do it because I like it. I don’t care about the rest.

So to hell with the tests. 

Flying Machine

Most of the time, if we just teach the way we know we should, the kids will do fine on the tests anyway. But even if they won’t, as soon as we begin to focus on things BECAUSE they’ll be on the test, or rush through content BECAUSE the test is coming, our priorities drift away from our calling. Testing puts us in an adversarial role towards our weaker students, and rewards ZIP codes over zeal.

Testing is anti-learning, and anti-education. It doesn’t even $#%&ing work the way they keep pretending it does. 

I can’t prevent lawmakers from labeling my kids as losers, or failures, or stupid, but I don’t have to be the instrument of such blasphemy. Bill Gates may excoriate my darlings for their lack of college and career readiness while Sir Michael Barber shakes his mass-mandated little fingers at them for their reading scores or their lack of interest in Algebra II – but I don’t have to help. 

I don’t have to abuse my kids to please lawmakers or publishing companies. I refuse.

My students are awesome. Some of them are lazy, but that’s fixable. Others lack certain skills or critical content knowledge, but I’ll ride their behinds until they progress. They’re amazing, even while they make me crazy. They’re perfect, even when I have to kill them dead in front of God and everyone in order to get their attention. Give me those tired, poor, muddled classes, yearning for a ‘B’. 

I love them. 

What will happen to my kids if they don’t pass their state tests? They might have to take them again, which kinda sucks. If not, there are a dozen alternate ways to graduate. Generally, as long as the children are suffering, hate anything involving learning or school, and replace natural belief in their own possibilities with a deep loathing towards their truest selves, the state is satisfied. 

I don’t want students to go out of their way to fail the damn things, but neither will we divert meaningful time or energy into passing them – the trade-off is simply too great.

Footprints in the Sand

If this is a calling, then let’s do it as a calling. That’s why we put up with the crappy conditions in some places and the degrading pay in most. It’s why we’re so tired, and why it’s sometimes hard not to become jaded, or bitter, or simply give up and go through the motions.

If this is a calling, then let’s do it as a calling. Make a difference, help kids, pour yourself out in a desperate effort to light a few more fires. Look your broken ones in the eyes and tell them that the world is a liar, and that they’re amazing, and beautiful, and powerful, and smart. If you can’t – if you’re afraid because someone’s pressuring you over test scores, and that’s the priority – then why are you even here?

Seriously – go get a real job. There are better gigs. Some even pay. 

Let them fire you. Fire ALL of us. Well, the good ones, at least – the ones unwilling to play that game, even a little. The ones who’ve decided to follow their calling until they’re shown the door.

Let those principals and superintendents reach out to that long line of people desperate to teach public school in Oklahoma, or Texas, or wherever you are. Around here, that line consists of something like… zero people. 

OK, that’s not entirely true – there’s that pompous unshaven guy with all the degrees who spills his coffee everywhere, and that weird chick with no concept of personal space or social cues. I guess they could hire both of them. But after that, their options are pretty much exhausted.

The rest of us aren’t going to worry about the tests, no matter how many times they’re revised or how high a ‘bar’ some legislator thinks they’ve set. Our bar is higher anyway – and so much better.

If they don’t like what we’re doing, they can find someone who will cooperate. We’ll sell shoes or fix computers or work in our brother-in-law’s insurance office. More money, less stress. 

To hell with your tests. I don’t care about them, and I won’t play along any more. I’ll no longer compromise my calling or my kids to cater to the rhetoric of liars and fools.

And neither should you.

Drop the Mic

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Teach Like You

BCE SnobI’m a fairly narcissistic fellow. I don’t mean to be, it’s just that I’m vain and self-absorbed. At least I have the skills, style, and cojones to make it work for me. I make no apologies; every rose has it’s – oh, are you still here? I hadn’t noticed.

There’ve been a slew of books and workshops in recent years promising to help you teach like a pirate, like a rockstar, like a hero… I received something rather spammy recently promising to help me become a more exciting presenter and unlock a fabulous career leading teacher workshops. Just call Robert in Wisconsin at ###-###-####!

I’m not knocking any of these books or workshops. I haven’t read or attended any of them, but I see happy teachers carrying on about them on Twitter and such… they sound great.

Except the one with Robert in Wisconsin. WTF, Bob?

It’s just that I don’t want to be a pirate, or a rockstar, or a hero. I want my kids to learn a little history, ask some better questions, and maybe learn to like reading a little. And I want to do it as… me. 

PiratesI’m pretty entertaining, and I have a degree. That should buy me some leeway, yes?

Of course, you don’t need to buy books or go to conferences to hear how you should be doing everything differently. There are no shortage of researchers scolding us for forcing our kids to recite from their McGuffey’s Readers and practice multiplication tables on their chalk slates, or whatever it is they think we do.

Seriously, if I read one more heavily-footnoted interview with yet another person who’s discovered that worksheets have limited effectiveness and some people are boring when they lecture, I may become violent. Can we steer some of the funding for these redundant studies into something more useful – maybe fresh blue ink for the mimeograph machine or another History Channel Documentary on VHS?

They’re not all bad, of course. Many make some fascinating observations and connections. They challenge us to reconsider some of our assumptions about kids and how they learn, or ourselves and how we teach. 

I’m a huge fan of rethinking what we do in our classrooms. I make a decent living leading workshops and peddling my teaching philosophy, sometimes for edu-entities and sometimes just as lil’ ol’ me. We should ABSOLUTELY step out of our comfort zones from time to time. It’s unforgiveable to plan our class time around what we have saved from LAST year rather than what might work best with THESE kids THIS year.

And there are some GREAT teacher books! That ‘Weird Teacher’ one has me so challenged and encouraged and validated all at the same time that there were actual tears at one point. Occasionally I’m even inspired by something shared by state edu-staff, or my own district superiors. Turns out there are a bunch of really smart, experienced educators around who love helping the rest of us impact our evasive darlings.

Good Teacher Books

Sometimes their ideas are better than mine. And sometimes research is right about stuff. I have much to learn about some of my students and how they think, feel, and perceive – so here’s to training, challenging, changing, and reviving.

BUT (and I have a big ‘BUT’)…

I hereby declare my official hostility towards anyone who gets paid to tell teachers they’re doing it wrong. I don’t care if they’re researchers, reformers, authors, or bloggers – kiss my class agenda, edu-snobs.

My ethical obligation to regularly seek better ways to reach more kids more deeply does NOT validate your desire to lecture me or talk down to me or my comrades. Quite honestly, if your research and ideas and pedagogy are THAT great, you wouldn’t need to be so condescending about it – we’d run to you hungry for more.

Cruella DevilleWhich, by the way, is pretty much what many of you keep telling me about my teaching methods. You know – if I were doing it right, I wouldn’t have to work so hard to coerce and browbeat them… like you’re doing to us?

You see, sharing ideas, stories, successes and failures, speculation and goals, are what professional development and collaboration and edu-blogging are all about. Maybe this time I’m at the front of the room and next time you’re showing us something your kids created, but at no point is it about being better, or smarter, or anyone ‘fixing’ anyone else.

Because at the end of the day, teaching is as much art as science. It’s as much educated guesswork as strategy. Given that you’re you and I’m me and that quirky new girl is the quirky new girl, consistency may be limited.

More significantly, my kids are my kids and your kids are yours. We may be in different rooms, different districts, or even different states, confronting different cultural variables, working with different resources, building on very different backgrounds and expectations… we’re lucky we ‘speak the same language’ at all.

ClonesWhen I’m in my classroom, my number one ethical and professional obligation has absolutely nothing to do with your studies, your strategies, and sure as hell not your tests – mandated or not. I’ll certainly consider the input of my department and my building leadership, but even those should take a back seat to what I think and feel and believe will be best for MY kids, today, right now.

And you have the same obligation.

I hope you play along in my workshops and that you consider my thinking, just as I appreciate yours. I hope you’re open enough to risk and change and stepping outside comfort zones to evolve as an educator and a professional, even when you’re getting by just fine already. 

But when it’s go time, follow your gut. Do what you know is best for you kids, now and down the road. Do it however you think will best work for them, from you. Don’t think about your evaluations, your VAM, your scores on this or that assessment, or even your career. If there’s testing to consider, then consider it – but not at the expense of what your gut tells you is best for your students.

To Sir With LoveWe’ve become SO comfortable doing things we know are bad for our kids because they’re ‘required’. Maybe we’re afraid, or maybe we simply hide behind what everyone else is doing. Is this such a rewarding career in terms of money, power, and glory, that we’ll sacrificing the very things that made it matter to begin with in order to keep it secure? Must be a helluva extra duty stipend. 

Teach like a rockstar if that works for you – or like that Freedom Writers lady or Marzano or To Sir, With Love. Challenge yourself and those around you to evolve, to up our game, and to WIN THEM ALL somehow.

But don’t you dare do anything that doesn’t ring true in your gut because I told you to, or because it’s required. Don’t you dare dismiss your inner strategist because what you’re envisioning might be stupid, or doesn’t align with something official, or might get you into trouble.

We’re trying to save kids in an unsaveable world. We’re trying to do the impossible with the insufficient. I’m not sure how many ‘right’ ways there are to attempt such madness. I’m confident the ‘wrong’ way is to try to do it as someone else.

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Confessions

Frustrated Teacher

This is not a year I’ve been proud of. 

I’ve had a few over the past sixteen years that have sucked for reasons largely outside my control, but this is the first time since those first few semesters that I’ve felt almost entirely responsible – not as a cause, but as someone who knew better in terms of MY responses, and didn’t do it. 

For… *sniff* – the children.

In years past I’ve been a pretty consistent hard-ass – quality of work, organization, due dates, etc. Like most teachers, exceptions abounded with circumstances. I’ve lost count of the number of individual deals I’ve made with students in difficulty, whether weird personal lives or academic struggles. If they’re trying, we’ll work something out. 

I’ve had to stifle overt hostility every time we’re told from the golden podium to give 50% to students who haven’t shown up or done anything yet because some kid in an anecdote had a tough October and we’re too jaded and dillweedish to let them ever recover.

“Damn – they’re on to us! We got into this profession so we could cackle maniacally at the unjust failings of children! We especially like to crush the ones living in their cars, working three jobs, and taking care of eleven siblings even though they don’t have fingers or eardrums. Fail, Enrique! Fail!”

Apparently I don’t always stifle it. 

But over time, reading enough tweets, enough blogs, enough articles, I softened. I weakened. I caved. Some of it was genuine doubt whether I could possibly be right and so many people smarter than me be wrong. Much of it, though – and this is where the self-loathing begins – much of it was laziness. The time and effort necessary to keep pushing every kid, to remember who was absent when and what that means for their make-up work and who had surgery and who was on a cruise, and the stories from other teachers about the parent calls, and emails, and meetings, and administrators, and… 

Most headaches can be easily avoided if you pretty much accept anything a kid gives you, whenever they give it. I lost a battle drawing some lines with a parent years ago (by following district policies, no less), and haven’t wanted to do that again. Every time I’d watch what other teachers were going through simply for holding to basic expectations, I’d pat myself on the back for knowing better than to go down THAT road again. 

I knew I was condemning my kids to much harder lessons down the road because I wasn’t willing to fight for their academic souls here, this year – when we all still basically love them and want to help them. This is the safest place in the world to struggle, or even fail a little. Not later, not somewhere else

But I wouldn’t see it – their eventual awakening. I wouldn’t know how much harder it would be later. But I do. 

That’s the wound; here’s the salt: 

This ‘flexibility’, this over-generalized ‘compassion’, didn’t work. Not for behavior, not for grades, not for anything. The more flexible I became, the more students were mired in a swampy mixture of all the stress one would expect from academic and personal overload but the actual productivity one would find in a 19th century San Francisco opium den. They were doing less and less, but freaking out about it more and more. 

What they eventually produced wasn’t usually very good, and often lacked context or use. Despite my most vehement exhortations, I couldn’t convince the majority of those so mired to keep up with what we were doing right now, in class, rather than dragging through that content review from last month’s quiz that they never seem to finish before they lose it and start over. 

“What does it matter WHEN they learn it?” Turns out it matters a whole damn lot.

True student collaboration became impossible because only a slim majority of students were prepared to contribute in any useful way. Class discussions or even direct instruction became less and less effective because it’s hard to build on something a third of them haven’t learned yet, and might never. 

History may never be easy, but it’s much less onerous when it’s experienced in order, and learned actively, together. Those opportunities vanished as I gradually ended up with 140 students in 40-50 different places, some analyzing and writing with great sophistication and others who’d pretty much ignored weeks of foundational work but suddenly wanted to get their ‘Skills Grades’ up and who had to be taught from scratch. 

It wasn’t just academics. I let too many little stupid things slide early in the year because I was trying to be more understanding of their individual quirks and needs and such. When I did assign something punitive, like lunch detention or some sort of service work, I’d quickly lose track of the paperwork as some would attend, some wouldn’t, half were absent that day anyway, and others were in detention already from another class, and… and… 

Eventually I just returned my energies to lesson planning and teaching. I now have a dozen kids throughout the day who aren’t “bad kids,” but who are 15 years old and still behave like a special needs group of 3rd graders when the spirit moves. I can’t skip the paperwork trail of consequences and just throw them all out in frustration (nor would I wish to), and there are four weeks left.  

So I’m making do.

The worst part of it is, I’ve failed my best kids. Their grades are fine, but they learned early on that most of my energy, most of our curriculum, most of their headaches would be dictated by the bottom 20% of the class. I suppose this in many ways is preparing them for the ‘real world,’ but I hate creating so many cynical little Republicans before they can even drive. 

I’ve failed my ‘challenging’ students because they’ve learned nothing, other than that they can pretty much do what they want and still move right along – thus reinforcing the very thing we complain about from our middle schools, who have about as much power to change that system as we do. 

I’ve failed my ‘average’ kids because they weren’t pushed beyond quiet mediocrity, staying below the radar and not causing trouble. Not exactly the motivational poster I signed up for. 

This freshmen class came to us as one of the least motivated, most pampered, quick-to-collapse, easily distracted, helpless, hopeless, shallow little nurslings I’ve ever encountered en masse, and I’ve accomplished absolutely nothing in challenging or changing any of that. There are some diamonds, believe me – and I love them all, somehow. But I fear for the rest if reality ever catches up. 

Maybe it won’t. Maybe our society has evolved enough that the consequence for irresponsibility, ignorance, and apathy, is food, clothing, shelter, and days spent drifting aimlessly and checking their phones obsessively. Maybe it’s not a teenager problem, but imminent national collapse. And maybe I can’t change any of it. 

But here’s what I CAN do. I can resolve next year to risk seeming merciless in my expectations, rigid in all things responsibility-ish, and demanding in my demeanor. I’ll fight the fights over standards and behavior, with or without official backing. I’ll lose some of them, but I’ll go down kicking and screaming – not because I’m an asshole who wants kids to fail, but because I love them. I want better for them. I want hope for them. And because I know from long, painful experience that the only true fulfillment or growth comes from actually accomplishing things. Actually learning stuff and doing things. 

I’m sure we have about a dozen motivation posters to that effect in this hallway alone. Maybe they’ll be my defense. 

I may not succeed. I doubt my humble efforts will prove to be some kind of miraculous solution. But I hope by May 2016, I’ll at least have offset some of the scalding awareness that I’ve become part of the problem. 

Neville Longbottom

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5 Bad Assumptions Behind ‘Education Reform’

Reading Newspapers

Education reform efforts have been facing quite the backlash recently. You may suspect that teachers as a body are resistant to change, and perhaps afraid of a little accountability. You may wonder why they resent rhetoric promoting ‘higher expectations’. 

Fisher CostumeYou’re not entirely wrong. Few of us, teachers or no, like change or higher demands on our time and energy – especially when they come from people who have no idea what we do or what they’re talking about. 

I’d like to respectfully suggest, however, that we make note of some of the assumptions behind most education reform talk. If the assumptions are accurate, then we can debate the best course forward. 

If, however, the majority of ‘reform’ rhetoric is based on mistaken assumptions or intentionally propagated inaccuracies (what we in the education business sometimes call ‘lies’, or in the Latin, bovis stercus), then those assumptions and assertions must first be corrected. Otherwise, anything built upon them is destined to fail – and perhaps do great harm along the way. 

Assumption #1: Teachers just aren’t trying very hard.  

Bad TeacherThe only way VAM and TLE and other teacher evaluation measurements make any sense or improve anything is if they spur teachers to do a better job. If teachers are capable of doing something better, and aren’t doing it now, the only reasonable inference is that they don’t care enough to improve otherwise. 

If we believe that, let’s say so. A little evidence to support such an idea wouldn’t hurt, either. It’s probably not true in most cases, so that part might be tricky. 

Assumption #2: Teachers aren’t very good at anything, including teaching. 

You remember the old line – “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” It’s been updated recently – those who can’t do, can’t teach, either.  

Pink Floyd TeacherIf the solution is ‘raising the bar’ for those entering the classroom, then the problem must be that those choosing education aren’t smart enough to do what they’re hired to do. If that’s true, it’s worth asking what would be useful in drawing ‘smarter’ people into the field – or how to better educate those already willing. 

But in the same way it’s tricky to devise a universal method to accurately assess a diverse body of students, it’s nearly impossible to delineate a specific knowledge base and set of skills you wish to demand of adults working with a heterogeneous mass of kids through a long series of unpredictable circumstances.

So… good luck with that. 

Assumption #3: There’s a surplus of highly qualified, brilliant, dedicated people just dying to get into the classroom if the bad, tenured and unionized teachers would just get out of the way. 

History 101No one wants this job.

Buy a few drinks for an administrator of your choice and start asking them for funny ‘teacher interview’ stories. You don’t like the people they’ve hired? You should see the lot they’ve turned away, even when it means unfilled positions. 

I’m curious… what’s preventing YOU from applying for the gig? 

Yeah, that’s what I thought. 

Districts can’t keep warm bodies in place, let alone top notch, hungry-to-martyr-themselves educators. It’s a real wet blanket on the ‘higher standards’ rhetoric when you can’t fill the positions already open. 

Assumption #4: Every kid should be able to master a certain level of math, history, reading, writing, science, government, financial literacy, computer skills, current events, and a wide variety of both life and academic skills, and demonstrate those things on some kinda big test. 

Why? 

Also, they can’t. At least not all of them can. Turns out kids aren’t as similar as you might wish. 

I’m bewildered why adults who maintain such passion about various subject areas or testing standards won’t take the same tests we want our kids to master. If that knowledge and those skills are so essential, you should do great! If they’re not – and if you’re doing just fine without being able to score whatever arbitrary number has been chosen this year – why should 16-year olds have to die in that ditch? 

EOI History Sample

Do you know the answer, without looking anything up? 

If not, you have no value as a person, student, or employee. Period. Let’s try another. 

EOI Biology Sample

How’d you do? 

Keep in mind that if you can’t answer these off the top of your head, you’ll never be successful at anything ever, and neither will they. 

EOI Math Sample 1

EOI Math Sample 2

Should I even ask?

There’s nothing wrong with any of these subjects or questions, but every time you hear yourself or someone else wonder why kids can’t be expected to know “the basics” or “anything important,” remember how you did with these and the extent to which that answer has shaped the rest of YOUR life.  

And if you got them all, congratulations – you’ve mastered 10th grade. 

Assumption #5: Schools fail because of problems within the school – bad teachers, bad leadership, bad kids, etc. 

The obsolete structure and mindset of the public school system is a disaster. There are certainly problematic students in the mix, but most behavior and other problems stem from trying to fit 21st century teenagers with a wide variety of interests, backgrounds, and skill sets, into a 19th century factory model designed for entirely different priorities in very different times. 

We can’t break all of them – some of them survive, unfortunately for our state rankings.  

Dude WTFWe can’t vary the curriculum significantly – state law. We can’t afford meaningful, hands-on learning of the sort you keep reading we should be doing, nor can we spare ‘core curriculum’ time to do anything interesting that kids might actually want to explore (and on which we could then build essential universals, like reading and writing and mathematical reasoning) – state law and legislative purse strings. 

We can’t show great flexibility with time trapped in desks, whether in quantity or times of day students must be detained – state law. We can’t toss the A-F grading system or the 100% scale which reduces everything a child learns or does in a semester to a single digit, nor can we commit to something more meaningful and descriptive than traditional GPA – higher ed and parents demand those numbers. 

We can’t pull out kids with similar needs or challenges to receive customized help or guidance in separate classes or specialized schools – state law. Nor are we given the resources to do it properly within our current structures – legislative pursestrings.

Testing CartoonWe can’t hold kids with the most potential to real academic standards or expectations of personal responsibility – angry parents, strange cultural ideals about the need to have 102% in everything and never struggle or fail, and administrators who are under a lot of pressure to show that every single child in the district is Top 10%. 

I don’t offer any of this up as an excuse, or even a complaint. I do offer them as rebuttal to the most common complaints – and worse, the most common ‘solutions’ – I hear regarding public education. 

There are MANY problems with the current system, the current standards, current resources, current restrictions – maybe even some of the current teachers and current leaders. But until we can address the whole picture accurately and honestly, no degree of rhetorical chicanery will do much more than kick the corpse of our ideals and rifle its pockets for change.  

Fixing Kids

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