Woke up spicy

I cannot express my contempt for folks who could never do my job who've spent years pushing a deficit-based, dubiously scientific but definitely politically conservative approach to reading pedagogy.

Imagine being a reporter who can't tell an ELD lesson from an ELA lesson and deciding that the problem with reading today is one (1) woman, who unlike you has spent her life listening to children.

Further imagine that you posit this woman is driven by greed while you work tirelessly to direct millions of dollars to wealthy Republicans and their publishing concerns.

Then imagine that you listen to one (1) podcast and decide you can do my job plus evaluate curriculum better than experts.

Unlike today's local Astroturf, I was here the last time we did this and I'll be here for the next reading war (I hope to retire by the fourth battle of my career). So don't come at me with exactly the same curriculum you've been selling since the 50s and insist I pretend it's something new because this time you call it science.

I hear SFUSD is planning voluntary summer PD on whatever they buy and let me assure you it is in their best interest to keep it voluntary so I don't show up (as a courtesy). The last time they made it mandatory they also started saying just entirely made up shit about English phonology and I'm afraid I was forced to derail that shit. I know it's tiresome af for everyone else there, but it is also super bad to teach teachers nonsense (that has the bonus of being kinda racist) and I am too ADHD to sit through that and crochet in silence.

Elswhere in Papers of Record

The New York Times has noticed that there's something of a substitute teacher crisis. Alas, it's the Times, so they're mostly concerned with individual teachers and districts (and mostly teachers - the author notes in the comments that there isn't evidence for the suggestion that teachers are not at work more days than other professionals, but that's the theme of the piece).

Personally, I think this is a missed opportunity to talk about how we didn't spend COVID funds on HVAC improvements. The nation has old school buildings with bad HVAC. Failing heat and lousy ventilation mean people get sick. It's true the federal government ended up zeroing out a proposed fund for school infrastructure, but there was a lot of money for COVID improvements and it didn't lead to concrete, lasting changes like better buildings with better air circulation.

Also of note is that the article proposes site support subs as a possible fix. A site support sub is a substitute who works full-time at a school. This person can cover classes if someone is out (or to facilitate lesson study, during the day meetings, etc.) but is at the site every day even if there are no absences. In this way, the sub builds relationships with students and staff, and that should mean that when they do sub, the day is more like one with the teacher of record.

What's interesting about this is that SFUSD used to have site support subs at high-needs sites. They got rid of them a couple of budget crises back. As part of the UESF contract extension for 2022-23, there was a site support sub pilot. Under Matt's "Four Times the Required Reserves, Enough Assistant Supes to Staff a Large Elementary School, and Up to Fifty Cents for Each School Site" budget, site support subs will be cut, again. 

This is SFUSD: every elementary school will have an instructional coach next year, despite the very limited data of their efficacy. No school will have a site support sub, despite the clear impact of unfilled absences on a school and a class. No data were collected to judge the impact of the pilot; we fund our schools based not on data, but on the whim of our Supe.

Bad Ideas Never Die (if they're popular with billionaires)

One of the most frustrating things about my field is how impervious it is to data. No matter how much evidence once can marshal, certain theories return again and again. Sometimes they have a new gloss (it's not just phonics and basals: It's The Science of Reading!)¹, but sometimes it's just the same bad ideas, under the same name, with the same problems.² The Washington Post has a long and eye-roll-causing history of pushing the worst ideas of ed reform, whether it's punitive charter models, Teach for America, or just basic "Teachers unions ate my homework and kicked my dog" stuff. Today, they decided to let a pundit post like it's 2010.

I mean, this op-ed is so obviously nonsense - it ends with the "both conservatives and liberals will hate this, so it must be good!" reasoning, a claim so devoid of meaning even middle schoolers know better than to use it in their opinion pieces - that I almost hate to discuss it.

Still, for folks who are new to this argument, let's look at it a little more closely.

First, I need to note that while a $100,000 salary is a pay increase for most starting teachers, it's a significant pay cut for veterans in most cities. Does Daniel Pink pay any mind to that - or even to cost of living issues, given that many districts in the Bay Area already start around this salary? Of course not: he opposes tenure and step and column pay increases in general, and merely admits at the close that his proposal of "pay all teachers the same salary, nationally, for their whole career" is probably not a winner and there are some things to work out.

Also, in exchange for this (dubious) largesse, Pink has two demands: an end to "summers off" and also some kind of test-based accountability/and end to tenure. The latter of these is risible even given this column: Pink fully admits that robust data indicate that test-based accountability doesn't work, but he still seems to think it's necessary. Honestly, the Washington Post should've had an editor make Pink reckon with this: any high school English teacher would require revision here.

That leaves us with those eight weeks of vacation Pink wants teachers to give over. In exchange for this (possible) raise, teachers simply have to agree to work 22% more every year! A mere forty extra days a year! (Pink is silent on whether he thinks those days should also be extended - we could be looking at even more additional labor, but I am now thinking more deeply about Pink's proposal than he did. It must be the teacher in me: I am too habituated to working for free.)

Beyond the obvious question of whether something is actually a raise if you have to work an extra eight weeks to receive it, Pink hasn't grappled with what teachers are doing in those weeks. Ancedotally, I spent two entire weeks of my last summer vacation moving into a new classroom, three weeks completing professional development of my own volition, and one week lesson planning and preparing for the new year. In all, I had two weeks off. Teachers are not overburdened with planning time during the school year, and deep professional development doesn't happen in ninety minutes after school. The time teachers volunteer over the summer makes them better at their jobs. Pink does not understand what teaching is, so he cannot consider the implications of his (already problematic) breezy end to summer vacation.

What's really tiring about this op-ed is that it's been written before. We've done this all before. Education reformers and dilettantes (but I repeat myself) are forever proposing salary increases for teachers - but only if those teachers agree to some set of conditions. Those conditions are typically unsupported by data, but strip away the job protections teachers have managed to hold on to despite other workers losing them.

Here, teachers give up tenure and regular, predictable raises for an unsustainable work year and a dubious raise. You know, like at KIPP schools (another WaPo favorite). KIPP salaries often beat their surrounding public school district's - but they have miserable turnover and rely on uncredentialed, itinerant teachers because the job is unsustainable.

One has to wonder if Daniel Pink is unaware of this issue, or if he knows that his tired idea doesn't increase teacher recruitment and retention but is very popular with wealthy folks who resent teachers and our unions and our pensions and our troubling unwillingness to give them up.

1 Alas, the Science of Reading is just phonics and basals. It's not science and the data have not improved since the last time we did this, which was less than twenty years ago.^↩

2 I know this is not unique to education - I live in San Francisco, where self-described "moderate Democrats" are investing heavily in bringing back the worst ideas of the Reagan administration. Also, yes, I did just learn how to do footnotes.^↩

Just a Little List

 In SFUSD, right now:

• Third year of payroll drama (current issues: second year of mistake-laden W2s, folks on leave are not getting paid, raises retroactive to 7.1.23 and ratified 11.23 unlikely to be paid until 5.24)
• Due to massive staffing shortfalls, extreme expenditures on independent contracting firms to complete basic functions, especially in Special Education - higher cost, more privatization, increasing number of children moving to private specialty schools at district expense because we can't meet their needs
• Absolute failure of onboarding, leading to hired staff waiting months to be cleared for classroom work and ultimately leaving for other districts that will pay them
• Gutting cuts to sites, some as large as 50%, leaving schools unmanageable and unsafe

AND YET! Our highest-paid staff received two raises in the last twelve months. For some of these folks, all of whom make more money than teachers with 22 years or more of service, that added up to a 33% increase in pay. 

This is SFUSD under Matt Wayne: a total failure to manage basic functions like payroll being rewarded, while the folks who do the work drown under ever-increasing responsibilities and fewer people to complete them.

One might wonder where the Board of Education is on all this, and the answer is: HA HA HA HA HA. Under the supervision of the lavishly-paid, resume-light AJ Crabill (known for presenting his own unvetted work as a roadmap to success, but under his old legal name so we think he's relying on outside experts), the Board has given up authority to the Superintendent and their "Goals and Guardrails". It boggles the mind to consider that they may believe rubber-stamping raises for the same folks who can't submit a fingerprint check to the Department of Justice are the folks who most need more money, but this is what happens when you recall the educators of color on the Board for well-monied Mayoral appointees.