Wildlife I Have Known

Since it abuts a park and is quite old, my wing of my school is an abundant source of wonder for the young naturalist.  Isopods, spiders, and various beetles in a wide array of colors, shapes, and sizes abound.  Grasshoppers and dragonflies occasionally stray in, as do a few cockroaches (I'm pretty lucky in this respect; if I see two roaches all year that's a lot).  We also have mice, which have attracted a few snakes in my time.  Early one morning a few years ago, a confused skunk came barreling through (without spraying, luckily).

This morning when I opened up the annex a giant thing came limping out of the dark.  It was so big I thought it was an injured frog.  Then I got a look at it:

(image from here)

After a little panicking unbefitting a Kindergarten teacher I was able to re-enter the building.  The mole cricket had placed itself between me and the stairs leading to my classroom, and there was no other way to enter.  (At the time I thought it was a mutant mammal/grasshopper cross or something; the little front paws for digging are really and truly creepy a clear example of diversity and adaptation in the animal kingdom).

So after a little preparation, I took a running leap and cleared four stairs in one go, putting me well out of the mole cricket's range.  Then I sprinted the rest of way to my room, went in, closed the door, improvised a windstop and got to work.   I also took a break to research the mole cricket, discovering that it could also fly.  I closed all the windows.

When I left, I jumped down all the stairs after warning the cricket that I was totally willing and able to smash it.  My voice hardly trembled at all.  Then I ran out of the building.  On my way out, I explained I had not locked up because I thought someone else might be working in the annex I knew that if I stopped to lock the door, thereby turning my back on the mole cricket and giving it an opportunity to sneak up behind, kill, and eat me.

It's funny; had the Kindergartners been there I know I would've been capturing it in a jar and quite positively excited about the whole thing.  On my own, though, not so much.

Big Questions of the Quotidian Educator

1. Why must a table always be just an inch too wide to go where you want it to?
2. Why are the outlets located in areas that will require great feats of cord and duct tape to access?
3. Why do isopods come into the school building where they cannot breathe well and therefore die?
4. Why does fadeless paper fade so egregiously?

In other news, every year I find that I become ever more exacting in my supply requirements.  For instance, I bought a whole lot of Astrobrights paper yesterday, paying a premium over less brightly colored, thinner choices.  That said, sometimes specificity is warranted.  For instance, no permanent marker combines the exactitude of line, even flow of ink, and low-odor that a brand-name Sharpie or Mark-It does, and as a left-handed person these things are important for keeping one's person neat and ink-free.

And That Is Going to Cost You.

Teachers struggle to deal with students who may be disruptive. “What most teachers complain about is that they have problem children and nobody helps them,” said Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, citing ratio of students to social workers that was more than 1,000 to 1 in the district.

According to the Civil Rights Project analysis, Chicago schools suspended nearly 63 percent of their black students with disabilities in 2009-10.

This year, the Chicago Public Schools adopted plans to reduce suspensions and deal with behavioral issues up front. “I am a strong believer in limiting mandatory disciplinary actions that remove a child from their classroom and school, which in many cases ultimately causes more harm than good for those students,” Jean-Claude Brizard, chief executive of the Chicago Public Schools, said in a statement.

SFUSD is also adopting such plans.  These plans will require an unprecedented level of communication and support between teachers, administrators, counselors, inclusion specialists, OT providers, parents, and students.  They're also going to cost money.

Given current school budgets and the years of unending racial disparities in education, I don't think teachers are wrong to be suspicious.

For instance: I have been told by a high-level special education professional that I cannot request any kind of OT screen - even with parents' strong accord - unless the child already has an IEP.  I have received requests for assessment from parents that were declined because they weren't written "appropriately" - for instance, because a parent asked for "help" instead of "assessment".  I have requested simple material support (like a seat wedge or something for the really, really bouncy child) and been told to write a Donors Choose grant to get it.

As a Kindergarten teacher, suspension is a rare thing indeed.  Still, I'm a professional and I take a long view.  I can identify that children need supports in Kindergarten that will help them successfully access their education.  (I can also identify that I am not reaching a particular child and I don't know what would help - and spend months begging for a quick professional observation.  So I read a lot of books.)  By providing these supports now, we're taking care of future problems, just like Brizard proposes.  Yet somehow the support teachers need too often fails to appear.  And that child who was really bouncy in Kindergarten didn't access the curriculum, and he or she gets further behind every year, while also becoming no less bouncy yet far less engaged, interested, or inclined to enjoy school.

Last year, I had a lot of interaction with the Special Education department.  While they are all hardworking professionals, the amount of incorrect information I heard was disconcerting (I now have a giant PDF of Special Education law on my computer at home so I can do my own fact-checking and cite law and code as needed).  Also, some of those professionals occasionally evinced that certain disdain for teachers that comes from too many years out of the classroom.  For instance, one of them asked me if I had tried a certain strategy; I drew the specialist's attention to the extensive logs that identified that strategy in use, with comments and adjustments made.  This person then apologized vaguely, commenting that very few Kindergarten teachers ever try such things.

So between the attitudes toward classroom teachers and the fact that front-end proactive measures require front-end proactive cash, I wonder how well these strategies will work out on the ground.  I am at once excited - success would have a huge impact on racial disparities in education, I believe - and also suspicious.

Those Lazy Teachers

Despite the fact that teachers in SFUSD are not due at work until a week from Wednesday, three-quarters of the classroom teachers at my site spent today getting ready for the next year.

About half came in last week, too; most are planning to work every day this week.

As always, these hours are uncompensated and not included in labor statistics or considered by:

• hedge fund managers with an interest in education reform on their way to the Hamptons, Art Basel or similar;
• leaders of education reform groups, waiting in line to deposit their $50,000 honoraria, and
• media pundits, enjoying snacks in the green room before makeup.

“It is true that we have an unfair society, and it is true that kids who are coming from the poorer backgrounds and whose parents don’t do a lot of reading are losing reading skills over the summer,” said Peter Gray, research professor of psychology at Boston College. “But let’s look at other solutions.” He added, “Whatever job we give to the school system, they ruin it."


Dear Dr. Gray:


Not to alarm you or anything, but technically?  You guys over at Boston College are also part of the education system.  So I'll look forward to seeing you breaking and ruining stuff at the next Keith Moon Memorial Party for Teachers.


It's true that in my teaching I haven't been able to conquer the insidious and ever-present effects of institutional racism, poverty, and the general vague disdain for children Americans cherish.  I'm not sure what I've been actively ruining, though.


I mean, I did accidentally drop a child-created clay sculpture last year.  Is that what you're talking about?  Because it was an accident and I apologized.  I guess it's possible that my clumsiness has left an indelible black mark of ruination on the poor artist's soul.  I promise I'll be more careful this year.


I admit that teaching is sometimes not that great for my health.  The lack of heat in my classroom last winter did some nerve damage to my fingers.  I wouldn't have said that they were ruined, though.  Perhaps you were being hyperbolic?

Or maybe you're just an arrogant research professor who knows you could do my job far better than I do, even though you've never done it yourself.  I mean, it's just a bunch of women - and union members - in our schools.  We can't be the brightest bulbs.  Certainly we have nothing on a research professor at Boston College.

I did take a look at your blog and I see you're a big believer in less test prep and more play.  Hey, me too!  Children - even adults - need plenty of free play and exercise for health, happiness, social development, emotional awareness, and just plain fun.  Not to mention that the better core strength and eye-tracking skills play develops really helps kids read - I make sure my students get free play and exercise every day.  But since I'm out ruining kids, maybe I should give that up?  I'd hate to ruin their play, too.

Anyway, I'm sure you have a busy day of blogging and opining ahead.  Me, I really need to wrap this letter up - it's heavy lifting day to get my classroom ready to ruin this year's class of eager young people.  At least I'll have plenty of help from the reduced funding, new vermin infestation, recent community violence, and the ongoing effort to save our schools by demoralizing our teachers.

Yours in Ruination,

E. Rat

Three Useful Phrases

One of the most important things I've learned in teaching is that it's okay not to have all the answers, make mistakes, or not be certain of the best course of action.  Some simple phrases of great classroom use:

1. I don't know.  Also really useful when followed by "but I can find out", "what do you think?", or "how could we find out?".
2. Sorry about that.  A simple apology has many uses.  One time it comes in handy is when an activity fails.  If something goes wrong, I generally try to debrief it with my class.  That way, I can publicly take responsibility for my part in the problem, troubleshoot what we can do if I make the same mistake again, and/or observe areas of shared fault.  (For instance, if I give unclear directions for getting materials and this leads to drama, the poor directions are my fault.  We may need a general procedure to avoid this happening again, or we may already have a related procedure that my students could have applied, but given the bad directions and the pleasure of chaos, they didn't.)
3. What would you like to happen now?  I find this useful when talking to aggrieved children.  I don't always know what will solve a conflict, or why information is being shared with me.  What do you want me to do about it? can also work, but it's more of an "advanced teacher" phrase, I think - too easy for it to sound accusatory or unhelpful.  The responses to this are often very illuminating.  Sometimes children just wanted to share information, sometimes they can get some insight into tattling (sometimes the response is "I want them to be in trouble"), and sometimes you can come up with some reconciliation that is more effective than an apology.  Children are quite creative in restoring relationships, I've found.

My issues with Teach for America are many, but one of the chief (if concrete) problems I have is that I really and truly don't believe they have any business placing Corps Members with preschool-age children.

I don't care how many big goals you can set, how effective your planning is, or how you've planned to document those significant gains.  There is information children need to learn in preschool.  A great deal of it is social-emotional.  Preschool age children do not negotiate with you and they do not reason in adult ways.  They are not built to sit through teacher-directed, content-heavy lessons.

To work effectively with preschool age children (Kindergarten too...really any grade, but especially with the youngest), you need to know something about child development.  You need to plan learning into play, provide experiences for social development, observe play behaviors, and assume that things will break down.  When they do, you need the patience to go with the flow and to figure out what children need - because critically, they won't know how to tell you.  The experienced PreK teacher knows that squirrelly bodies need to run around, that cranky faces need a snack, and what the pee dance looks like.

I suppose it is possible in theory that TFA's Corps Members learn all this in their five-week training.  However, it is so very different from the rest of the TFA mission that I doubt it.  I suspect that PreK teachers in particular are going to struggle with management, and some of them will behave in ways totally inappropriate for young children.  There will be damage.

Anyway, I was poking around the TFA blogs and I found this entry, which confirms a lot of my suspicions about TFA in the PreK environment.  I feel very badly for this Corps Member - the Institute environment is intense, and the feelings of failure/resentment/exhaustion must be horrible.  But I also believe that she did the best thing she could for herself and her prospective students, and I hope that TFA took her very valid concerns seriously.

...but even if they did, I still want them out of ECE.

Minutiae Sometimes Have Value.

Like most teachers, I am a walking Jeopardy game.  Children ask lots of interesting questions.  I think it is good educational practice to tell children you don't know something or to help them find the answer themselves, but I do generally try to find answers to their questions.  And whenever I am planning a new unit of study I try to learn more about the topic than I plan to teach.

Some develop this skill/habit/eccentricity through teaching; others collect strange facts and obsessions like magpies.  I am one of the latter.  One of my minor sideline interests is risk analysis, and through this I am perhaps overburdened with all kinds of information about Enron.

Strangely enough, this comes in rather handy when discussing education reform.  One of the wealthy deformers attempting to manipulate education like it's demand for electricity in a badly-deregulated market is John Arnold, ex-Enron trader and all in all not someone whose life experience leads me to think he has any place in education policy.

Apparently I'm not the only Enronista who's teaching, because a recent comment thread at the Answer Sheet (now closed) brought it up:

"educationlover54" begins:
Enron used to practice a strategy with their traders they called "Rank and Yank." Each year they would rank their traders by the amount of money they made the company, and then fire the lowest 10-15 percent. Since it was because of the traders that Enron went bankrupt, we can see that "Rank and Yank" wasn't all that good in the long term for the company.  

What RTTT is doing seems equivalent to Enron's "Rank and Yank" policy.


"educator53" chimes in:
Rank and Yank ensured that the most brutal Enron traders would continue their tricks. It pressured the traders to do things that were unethical in order to create false earnings for the company, such as the rolling blackouts that occurred in California.

And then "ramrants" gets irritated:

Enron didn't go bankrupt because of the traders. It went bankrupt because of the deriviative accounting practices they implemented. This is the reason why all the finance and accounting executives are currently in prison and not their traders. 
 
The interent [sic] is a wonderful thing. Where else can you spread your ignorance to the masses?


I'd like to respond to "ramrants": Yes!  You certainly spread your ignorance on the internet today!

Because ramrants?  Is WRONG.  Among the many reasons Enron went bankrupt were its traders:

1. Enron's energy manipulation shenanigans opened them to huge liabilities, and they had to first hold cash and then give it away to settle regulatory issues at a time they could not afford it.
2. Traders went to jail and accepted plea bargains to avoid prison because of their illegal manipulation of energy markets.  In fact, the first Enron plea deals originated in Portland - among electricity traders - prior to the bankruptcy.  (Besides, now that Andy Fastow's out of the halfway house, I am quite certain Jeff Skilling is the only Enrat still in prison.)
3. Traders at Enron rose to positions of power, taking their dubiously legal and morally bankrupt strategies to the company as a whole.  Enron's last President?  A trader.  The person who perhaps  lost the most of Enron's cash while making off the best?  Also a trader.
4. Enron's traders demanded massive "retention" bonuses as the company bled cash, even though the "retention" they were offering was a few months at best.  This made it difficult for Enron to raise cash because its burn rate was worsened.
5. Enron's trading book was essentially valueless; despite the traders' claims, they weren't sitting on any cash to save the company.  Nor did their unit survive after its purchase - UBS laid off the traders and then closed the book.
6. And most critically, Enron's traders burnt through the cash Dynegy gave Enron as part of their merger agreement.  When Dynegy realized the cash was gone, the Hail Mary merger failed, and Enron had no choice but to declare bankruptcy.  That's right: in the end, the traders bankrupted Enron.

I don't know if ramrants is simply misinformed or one of John Arnold's commenting identities.  Regardless, Enron as a whole - traders, Rank and Yank, mark to market, you name it - all of it was built  around the value of being number one no matter the cost.  That's why the elevators showed the stock price.  That's why the traders ran the asylum.  That's why ludicrous deals with great but fake numbers got approved just before annual bonuses.

Enron was built around the idea of absolute, cutthroat competition.  It was a brutal and hostile workplace.  In that environment, moral lapses and cheating became commonplace, even honored.  Honesty got you lousy bonuses and recommendations to find work elsewhere; coming up with ways to bankrupt Californians and giving them catchy names like "Death Star" got you big bucks.  And we can all see how that played out.  John Arnold may have a lucrative career and plenty of cash on hand to bring Enron's values to education, but most of Enron's rank and file employees lost everything.

So in the end, Enron does matter.  Its values are those we see in education reform.  That those values are bankrupt and destructive goes unmentioned or ignored.  I don't think we can allow that: we need to fight the kind of ideology upon which Enronesque deformers rely.

And that's why being an Enronista does still come in handy.

The Inexperienced Leading the Uncredentialed

Dear Match Graduate Program in Education,

I think this Answer Sheet column sums up the big problems - the general deficit approach to poor students of color, the lack of agency and responsibility granted to students, etc. - but they neglect to condemn some stylistic issues.  Presumably, they're letting readers make their own judgements, and maintaining civility.

I have no such compunctions.  Therefore:

1. Maybe it's because I wasn't the kind of kid who "succeeded in school when given freedom", but it alarms me that you assume high-needs children must have their freedoms restricted to succeed. It's not just deficit, it's damaging.  If we do not teach children how the powers that be expect them to act in low-structure environments, we are condemning them to fail.  Besides, I bet your students do very well in many high-freedom situations - you just don't bother to identify any that might be different than those with which you grew up.
2. LOLCats?  No, seriously: you illustrate points with LOLCats?  Wrong on so many levels.
3. Despite my serious muscles, I never attempt to "bad-ass" my way through a classroom.  And yet my students respect me.  Perhaps this has to do with my assumption that given the proper explanations for why I want something done in a certain way, they'll agree to do it.  You know: I respect my students enough to believe they deserve to understand my reasoning.
4. Speaking for my fellow ADHD, you can make us sit up straight but you can't make us learn that way.  Sitting up straight takes so much energy I don't have that much for actual learning.  I look good, though.
5. Children behave as we expect them to.  If we expect them to run wild through the halls and demand therefore that they do exactly as we say - silent prisonwalking - sure, they may do it.  They'll also come to understand that you don't believe they could control themselves in any other way.  That's not a lesson I want to teach.

More broadly, I always think it's funny how unmanaged my students must look to these charter types.  Yet my students learn the content I teach and practice critical thinking.  How do they think I get these results?  Do they assume they're false?  I truly don't get it.  The way I teach isn't that odd or unique.  I have to assume that these kids look, figure the results are poor, and condemn it.

Special Rights

Various school reform advocates claim all they want is equity with real public schools.  Charters just want to share space with regular public schools.  They simply want access to the same funding streams.    Choice programs will offer rigorous education to all, with all schools held to strict accountability standards.


The problem is that this just isn't true.  The reformers don't want equity, they want Charter schools have a bad habit of taking over spaces, not sharing them equitably.  And the latest news out of Louisiana reminds us that accountability standards aren't for everyone, either:


State money will continue to flow to scores of private and religious schools participating in Louisiana's new voucher program even if their students fail basic reading and math tests, according to new guidelines released by the state on Monday.


The reform rhetoric and reform reality are not at all the same.  When the rhetoric is questioned, the reform crowd has a bad habit of calling for civility, under the theory that questioning untruths is rude.  It's time to demand honesty over civility.

Believing the Lie

Charter school proponents often turn to a delightful interpretation of market forces when extolling the benefits of their schools.  Parents are informed consumers who shop for the best school option, and the market power forces every school to be better through the power of competition.

This is ridiculous, of course.  We mandate schooling; it is not some kind of luxury add-on for which we shop.  Our consumers are variably informed, and our charter schools are not interested in all shoppers anyway.

Of course, often all cutthroat competition does is cut a lot of throats, not better all who are forced to compete.  And as the article shows, this isn't a fair competition.  The existence of charter schools does not empower real public schools through all-American competition; it weakens them.  While charters compete for the most-informed parents, public schools educate all comers.  While charter schools benefit from extra private funding, public schools lose funding - and not only through enrollment cuts, but also from the damage perpetuated on our economy by some of the very same proponents of charter education.

I don't believe that charter school champions were necessarily ever that interested in improving school quality broadly.  They certainly don't have the means or methods to do so.  What they have accomplished is supporting the dismantling of broad public education in the United States.

The failure of some competitors is to be expected in a free market system.  It's a little harder to accept when that failure dooms so many children.  It's time to start challenging the idea that schools are a commodity to be sliced, diced, and sold.  They are a public trust for all of us.

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Discussions

There is widespread agreement across the political spectrum that the official poverty rate is the highest it has been in nearly fifty years. Nearly a quarter of all children live in poverty. Needless to say, the impact of poverty on those children, their families, and their schools is enormous.

Poverty means transient, unsafe, and crowded housing situations. These do not offer the quiet, well-lit homework zone most teacher magazines recommend I suggest to parents at conferences. Nor do they support regular, uninterrupted sleep. Low-quality housing in industrial neighborhoods causes health problems like asthma; these health problems further disrupt sleep and impact learning. Sick kids can't get to school. This housing is often located in food deserts, so even if our hypothetical poor family receives food assistance (California ranks 50 out of 50 in participation in food stamp programs by eligiblity), healthy food is not necessarily available. Malnutrition and hunger impact learning: hungry children are not focusing on academic content.

I could go on like this for pages. I think it's clear that we have an enormous problem. It's also a problem that we have the means and ability to solve. We do not live in a poor nation. Tax rates are at incredible lows. Income disparity is a yawning gap. Safety net spending is miniscule. Rather than investing in a healthy, well-educated society - don't you think a civil democracy needs one? - we are choosing to abandon one in every six Americans.

However, we can't even have a serious discussion about poverty and what it would take to at the very least mitigate poverty rates and provide a minimal standard of living and education for every American. And that's because some people will think, say, and do anything to avoid it. From the article linked above:

Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, believes the social safety net has worked and it's now time to cut back. He worries that advocates may use a rising poverty rate to justify additional spending on the poor, when in fact, he says, many live in decent-size homes, drive cars and own wide-screen TVs.

First off, I've got to say that Mr. Rector has needs a hobby if worrying about spending on the undeserving, television-owning poor is keeping him up nights.  But more importantly, Mr. Rector's statement is the worst kind of dodge.  It's the kind of argument we see about pensions - "I don't have a pension and will starve in the street if I try to retire," observes quoted Voter X.  "So why should anyone else?"  The possibility that Voter X might be better served by a wider public pension system or more generous Social Security benefits is not addressed.

Rather than admitting that a rising poverty rate might in fact be a problem, Mr. Rector would like you to focus on how the poor aren't really poor.  After all, they own things.  Mr. Rector does not believe the poor should own things, I guess.  Whether he thinks Oliver Twist-esque workhouses are the solution or not he doesn't mention, but clearly poor people shouldn't be participating in this whole "Ownership Society"  thing - or at least not the parts that involve, you know, actually owning anything.

I'd like to take a moment, though, to look into these possessions that the poor may have, thereby causing Mr. Rector to doubt their poverty.

1. "Decent-size" homes.  Mr. Rector does not explain what "decent-sized" means.  Nor does he explain whether or not he is accounting for how many people are living in that home.  Nor does he tell us whether the home is well-maintained or in a nice neighborhood.  Notice, too, that Mr. Rector isn't claiming that the poor own these homes.  If some person's apartment over at Sunnydale is larger than Mr. Rector feels is appropriate (even if the entire extended family is sharing it), that person qualifies as indecently over-housed in his view.  What a broad-minded and charitable individual, no?  (He's also not considering the newly-poor, unemployed and stuck in homes with underwater mortgages until they are evicted during foreclosure proceedings.  But I digress.)  Don't miss that he's talking about decent-sized homes.  Apparently the real poor live in indecently-sized homes.  Any decency should not be provided to the poor, huffs Mr. Rector.
2. "Drive cars".  Let's go back to our hypothetical Sunnydale dweller in his or her huge apartment.  Sunnydale is located in the far southeast side of the city.  It is largely surrounded by a park.  Local labor opportunities are few and in between.  Sunnydale is served by two bus routes.  So if our Sunnydale resident has a job, he or she can commit to a daily commute of at least an hour by bus or buy a cheap used car.  I'm guessing that Mr. Rector is not a big fan of government spending on public transportation - the kind that would be necessary to make not owning a car a possibility for the rural poor, people living in poverty in very spread-out suburban areas, poor people in underserved neighborhoods, and so on.  "Poor people should take the bus!" howls Mr. Rector.  "Public transportation funding is a boondoggle!" he adds.  So should the poor walk?  Mr. Rector wants you to focus on the undeserving poor he posits, not the fact that he has deposited them in a Catch-22.
3. "Wide-screen tvs".  This one always gets me.  Beyond the fact that a wide-screen television isn't terribly expensive these days (Mr. Rector is living in the late 1980s, I think), and that people who want television recently had to upgrade their sets to receive HD programming, television is the cheapest appliance available if you think about its many purposes.*  Television can provide news, entertainment, education - heck, even religion! - with low upkeep and electricity costs.  Televisions are durable and fun for the whole extended family living in their too-generously sized home.  I understand that Mr. Rector thinks the poor should be picking oakum and doesn't think they need to be informed, but this idea that television ownership is a dividing line between the poor and not-poor (or the deserving poor and those not deserving) is hogwash.

So Mr. Rector wants us to focus on those terrible, not very poor people in poverty.  Rather than examining what it would take to have a robust safety network, we should condemn one in six Americans for the crime of possibly owning a television.  This is certainly a popular and powerful way to control our political debate.  It's also dishonest, peripheral, a dodge, and extraordinarily hateful.  I hope that Mr. Rector never finds himself in poverty.  But if he did, I doubt a television, a car, and a decent-sized dwelling would make him feel less so.

*For the record, I do not actually own a television.  I don't mean to argue that television is a wonderful thing.  I just want to observe that it is ubiquitous and on an adjusted by use basis a good investment.

Links

Have you updated your whooping cough vaccination recently?  Remember, adults need a booster.  Nor should you forget that immunity is not a lovely parting gift after contracting whooping cough.  Whooping cough is extremely unpleasant and you do not want to have it or infect others.  I speak from experience.  (Moreover, since I am allergic to tetanus and therefore can't be vaccinated against whooping cough, I am counting on the herd here.)


I believe that diversity in and of itself is valuable and important.  However:


Research shows that students attending racially and socioeconomically diverse schools have higher academic achievement across the board.


Neat, huh?  Support diversity in schools today!

A Clear Credential vs. HOUSSE.

The No Child Left Untested Act wants every child to have a "highly qualified" teacher.  Whether or not you believe five weeks of training will create a highly qualified teacher, it's not hard to be highly qualified.

One of the things you don't need is a full teaching credential.  In California, intern credentials - a two year credential that requires you pass a test and enroll in a credential-granting program - is enough to be highly qualified.

So teachers who have no classroom experience and no coursework in education count as highly-qualified.  This San Diego USD NCLB compliance page explains the requirements.  Basically, you need at least one hundred points to qualify, and if you can't scrape up the full hundred, you can still count as highly qualified by having a classroom observation.  This is a pretty standard worksheet for demonstrating that one can meet California's "High, Objective, Uniform State Standard of Evaluation" (HOUSSE ).

In short?  Without bothering with an observation and Form 3, I can rack up several hundred points.  Being designated "highly qualified" is highly easy and requires limited qualifications.

And it definitely doesn't require a full teaching credential earned through completing coursework and cleared through observations, portfolios, and testing.

Best Behavior

I went to a screening of "American Teacher" this weekend which included a discussion.  I was on my best behavior, so I generally avoided flipping out or observing actual inaccuracies in the statements of others.  It's no holds barred around here, though!

1. To the rising second year Teach for American who was recruiting for Students First, the reason that all those veterans aren't working as hard as you isn't that they're lazy.  It's that they've done this before and they've already made the investment in early-career prep you still need.  (I think I inadvertently upset this young person, however, by observing that one of the factors making my job harder was teacher churn: the need to take care of first year teachers at the cost of my own prep, plus how all professional development is geared toward their needs, even though many of those teachers won't stay more than two years.  This person definitely won't and turned red when I said this, but it wasn't directed at anyone.  Really!)
2. To the charter school owner who explained that we know just how to educate children of color, your state receives muuuuuch more money per pupil than California and has some pretty notorious issues around charter school enrollment and retention. And also?  We may know how to educate all children, but we're sure working hard to fail some of them.
3. To the new teacher who said teacher salaries are pretty good, I felt that way too my first few years.  Then I got older and started having family financial needs.   And I discovered that the top of the salary scale is just about ten thousand more dollars than I make now, despite all I will learn and all the investments I will make in that time toward improving my practice (and equipping my classroom).  That made me a little frustrated, particularly as I graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Fancy Private University X, have advanced degrees, and could make lots more money in the private education sector writing tests or curricula.  Just saying.
4. To the teacher who claimed that teachers leave because students don't respect them, respect is not one's due simply because one is a teacher.  Families and students at my school respect me because I've been there, I demonstrate respect myself, and I assume we are all doing our best we can.  You'd be surprised.

In other news, I assume that this chilly July means a torrid September and purchased some clothing with a ninety-degree classroom in mind.

Reflect before Retooling

This op-ed is making the rounds, and I think it makes some pretty good points.  Teach for America is far too concerned with its application counts and acceptance rates, and despite its mission to support high-needs schools, quotes like this make it seem like the mission is to support recent college graduates while they find themselves:

Wendy Kopp, CEO and founder of TFA, addressed this issue last month in an interview with NY1 news: "Our applicant pool fell in half when we asked for a three-year commitment. It doubled if we asked for one year. The reason this plays out is that 22-year-olds think that two years is the rest of their life."


But I feel that the author makes some of the same mistakes in her framing.  Sure, one's teaching practice is undeveloped after two years in the classroom.  The frame here is around one's own practice, though - not around students or the school.  It's about the TFA teacher, not his or her impact on the host school.


And the real problem I have with Teach for America is its whole-school impact.  Schools are not stable when staff is in and out the door.  There is no institutional memory, standard and schoolwide systems, or even much rapport among staff.  Children are failed, because there aren't teachers who've known those kids since Kindergarten with whom to consult if they start having problems in fourth grade.  Families are failed, because building relationships is hard work that happens over years, especially when complicated by institutional roles and ethnolinguistic and class difference.


A five-year commitment would help.  TFA teachers have worse attrition than all teachers, but attrition is high across the board, especially at high-needs schools.  The job is often thankless and difficult, teachers are not particularly well-paid, and the idea that one embarks on a career for life is fading anyway.


More broadly, though, I think TFA has got to start thinking less about its "best and brightest" and more about those they encounter in their two years.  More narrowly, I think there are some things TFA has got to admit can't be done in a two-year commitment: Special Education and Early Childhood Education.  Special Education does have a shortage of teachers; putting minimally-trained young people focused on academic results doesn't ameliorate the bigger problem.  And nothing in TFA's training makes me believe they can handle social-emotional development and learning.  Perhaps that's because I can't forget this letter from a young Corps Member:


As a kindergarten teacher in a Title I school with 99 percent of students receiving free or reduced-price lunch, most of my 5-year-old students enter without being able to recognize the letters of their name or count to 10. They are certainly not suffering from overly high expectations but rather the opposite. Testing has shone a spotlight on the fact that for too many low-income children, the expectations have been so low in kindergarten that they leave without the foundational reading skills they need. Peggy Orenstein is correct: assessment in itself is useless. What is useful is its power to define expectations and hold students, parents and teachers accountable. My greatest wish is that one day my students will have the luxury of complaining about their “souped-up childhood learning.”


Not only is it depressingly dismissive of families, it betrays a fundamental lack of interest in what children need outside of academics.  And I've seen the result of all-work-all-the-time Kindergarten: if the children didn't have preschool, they often struggle socially throughout primary because the important work of emotional learning, play, and peer interaction was ignored in favor of drill.  If this is an example of what TFA thinks about Kindergarten, they can't be in ECE.

Job Expectations

Since there's only about a month of summer vacation left and I like to get started on room setup at the very beginning of August (saves stress later), I just finished ordering some basic room materials for the year.

I don't know any teacher at a high-needs school who doesn't buy his or her own bulletin board trimmers, name tags, charts, stickers, heavy-duty folders and other general supplies.  Some of these we order because we have specific desires.  For instance, I order my own folders because I would prefer to buy a couple sets of heavy-duty, extra-large folders annually rather than a couple hundred cheaper ones (which my school doesn't supply anyway).  I also bought a mess of these, which came highly recommended by teacher and trainer alike at the Institute I attended.  (I could just get pencils from the supply closet.)

But a lot of these things just aren't provided.  If I don't buy incentive charts, I can make my own (time-consuming).  If I don't buy bulletin board trimmer, then the boards won't be trimmed (ugly; also, it requires being far neater in cutting the paper since trim hides rough edges).  If I don't buy stickers, I won't have any.  And again: this is something that many - most - teachers have to do every year.  This is not a job requirement for other professions - CPAs do not need to buy their own green visors and calculators; doctors do not purchase their own surgical tools, etc.  This is yet another de facto paycut for teachers, especially since when school budgets are cut, supply budgets are cut - but children still need the same things.  (This is also why big line items for supplies in central office budgets are really irritating.)

As it happens, this means I've already spent my federal tax deduction ($250) for school supplies before the year has started.

Lavatory Liberty

There is something of an internet brouhaha going on around this essay, which observes that private power restricts freedom even in the free market workplace.

I have no desire to add to the erudite discussion, but I have to say that I am amazed by the number of people who do not find certain workplace restrictions coercive and seem to have no experience of them.

I mean, along with service workers and assembly liners, teachers have significantly restricted bathroom breaks.  It is not uncommon for teachers to go four or five hours without being able to visit the lavatory.  Field trips and rainy days can lead to six to eight hours without a bathroom break.

This isn't to say that other workers do not face far more severe and ugly restrictions and coercions.  It's just to wonder if those who support absolute freedom for bosses are just totally clueless.  If such a large working group - in a professional class and unionized job no less - is subject to rather demeaning and possibly dangerous restrictions, how can you ignore reality?

The Strange Double Life of Mr. Brooks

I think this Charles Pierce column covers most of the issues with David Brooks' latest screed in the New York Times, but a few questions remain:

1. How does Mr. Brooks reconcile his love of bizarre drill-and-kill experimental charter schools with the inquiry-driven, student-centered education he mourns here?
2. Is Mr. Brooks familiar with the diagnosis of ADHD in childhood?  Because even screening for ADHD is strongly discouraged until 2nd grade or so.  And many school districts (like mine) refuse to screen for it at all.  In short, Mr. Brooks: just because you heard about the mean spinster nursery school teacher who forcibly drugs young boys with Ritalin doesn't mean she exists.
3. Has Mr. Brooks read any recent Newbery Award winners?  While the narrator in Dead End in Norvelt does have nose bleeds under stress and avoids viewing corpses, he also spies on Hells Angels and assists in building a bomb shelter.  I don't think this is sensitive, anti-boy literature.  Does he propose that the author's other autobiographical tale be read instead?

As a side note, in New York Jack Gantos was one of the keynote speakers and pretty hilarious.  Although he did not tell the story of James Marshall and the scotch, he did highlight some of my favorite children's authors (on Tomi Ungerer: "...kicked out of [children's books] for being too grumpy!") and some of my least favorites (on Fancy Nancy: "I'm still shaking out the glitter!").

Question

SFUSD has released its latest update of its strategic plan, which includes some handy pie charts, tables, and graphs.

On page two, it lists out staff by type/location: site administrators, teachers and substitutes, paraprofessionals, student support services, nutrition, facilities, and "Central Office Classified".  The last group comprises a mere three percent of District staff - 261 people.  Needless to say, I anticipate seeing this figure regularly during contract negotiations and budget battles: You must accept another week of furloughs and pay freezes because there's no room for cuts at the Central Office!


Still, not everyone at the Central Office is classified.  Many of the people working at the Central Office are certificated - they have some kind of education credential.  Where are those people counted?  And given that those folks comprise the majority of the highest salaries, I'd like to see a breakdown of district   human resources expenditures by job class, with a pie chart showing the percentages of the total allocated to various groups.

Anyway, these charts are helpful, but I get the feeling they're gaming the "Central Office" count - much in the way that the District annually "lays off" a hundred folks at 555 McAllister and then fails to lay off any of them - or even go through the motions of sending notice as required by the Ed Code (to be fair, the District was marginally more honest about that this year, which is probably in their best interest - telling the media you're laying off a hundred District staff every year suggests that thousands work at 555 McAllister, 20 Cook St., 1098 Harrison, and the rest).

Dear Fellow California Voters,

I am delighted that you join me in panning the Governor's Legislature-approved plan to destroy the state's public schools if you don't vote for his tax initiative.  I agree that the Governor's scorched-earth tactics are offensive (and somehow manage to lightly singe the wealthy while charring the poor, but I digress).  I would also add that both tax plans will do far too little for California's schools - even if either/both pass, schools will still be drastically underfunded - and nothing to ameliorate ongoing, structural issues that condemn poor schools and poor districts to inadequate funding.

However, I feel compelled to observe that if neither tax initiative passes, these cuts will happen.  Your disgust will not stop them.  Recalling Brown and installing some Republican will not stop them.  And they will be absolutely brutal to your local public schools.

A few comments on common misconceptions:

1. There may be waste, but thousands are not billions.  Any large bureaucracy, be it private or public, is going to waste some money.  At some size point, streamlining ends.  However, small areas of waste - be they the fancy car allowances we give our state government elected officials, a redundant clerk in some office, etc. - are small.  And even collectively, they will not cover the proposed cuts.  Anyone blathering on about waste failed second grade math lessons on place value.
2. There is no magical money tree.  Indeed, corporations pay far too little to the state.  They won't even pay taxes to maintain the infrastructure they use.  But unless you are willing to significantly raise taxes or even overturn/rework Proposition 13, there won't be any money for education and social services in California.  Nor will the stingy federal government be opening its purse strings any time soon.
3. The state GOP benefits from not having to have a plan.  California's elected Republicans would like you to know that they oppose all school funding cuts.  They also oppose all new taxes and revenues.  See points 1 and 2.
4. You cannot blame this on undocumented Californians or the poor.  Again, this is an issue of place value.  Social service funding - which undocumented Californians do not receive - amounts to very little.  Poor people are not living well on your dollars.  Undocumented Californians are not privy to secret government cash funds from which you are barred.  Hating those who have less than you is far easier than structural changes that would actually make a difference but also threaten those in power.
5. Nor can you blame pensions - and you should have one, too.  The state's pension funds are slightly underfunded - no real surprise given the state of the money markets.  Contrary to popular belief, the worker-funded pensions are neither overly generous or destroying California's prosperity for years to come.  They are providing a moderate retirement to the state's firefighters, teachers, police officers, and social servants: hard working and well-educated people who accepted moderate salaries in exchange for a decent retirement.  Rather than despising those who have a retirement fund that will support their needs, it would be better to ask why extraordinarily wealthy individuals would prefer to add to their money mountains rather than provide all workers with a guaranteed retirement.  California's schoolteachers do not demand you work until you die to support them.  California's corporations do: the infrastructure for which you pay, and the state's  unequal tax burden (personal taxpayers pay more than corporations) support ever-higher corporate profits.  Yet these companies prefer to stockpile their cash and provide multi-million dollar pensions to their executives - who already have more money than they can spend - rather than doing well by their employees.

In short, I hope you'll join me in gritting your teeth and voting yes on both tax initiatives in November.  And after the vote, I hope to see you also organizing to send Proposition Thirteen into retirement.

Best,

E. Rat

It ends up that there is weather so vile that even I do not wish to try on clothing.

I only purchased one dress and one pair of pants in New York.

Disconnect

I'm always a bit bemused by ranting around Look At All This Stuff Kids Don't Know Find Me a Teacher to Blame.

Because the thing is, plenty of functioning adults don't have these skills, either.


Take spelling.  The spelling of the average citizen is appalling.  This is bigger than a few missing apostrophes - despite the fact that California reliably and annually places multiple questions (out of a mere forty) about plural endings and consonant doubling on its standard exams, adults I know spell these words wrong all the time.

Don't get me started on the limited vocabulary or basic innumeracy Americans display.

I only see two real possibilities here.  Either these skills are very hard to learn and few people ever do, or whatever failure there has been in teaching them has gone on for a long time.  Perhaps the fact that we don't really prize basic spelling - I don't care how many spelling bee documentaries are made, the fact is we have spellcheck - or vocabulary.

For the Record

As a veteran teacher in a high-needs school, I am aware that the average ed deformer is pretty sure I am lazy, child-hating, and bitter this summer as I sit on my couch, eating bonbons, counting my big dollars, watching television, and plotting ways to ruin children.

I think having two chickens living in my house so that they can live at school next year, plus spending some of my own money to do training this summer, and tutoring students for free might perhaps suggest their perspective is clouded.

...or maybe it's just that I'm not putting eighty hour weeks in all year that I can do this.  After all, the true teacher, as they see it, does actually sleep at school.

Why We Stay

There is so much talk about getting veterans to come to high-needs schools or recruiting short-termers for those schools that there's never any talk about the people who actually do stay.

Let's face it.  Those veterans from lower-needs schools are not going to be as successful at a higher-need school necessarily.  I won't say it's a harder job, but it is a different one.  The skill sets don't entirely overlap.  Moreover, contrary to popular belief, academic expectations in the classroom are higher at high-needs schools.  This can be a big shift in thinking and not an easy one.

Nor is the constant turnover of staff, even highly-trained and motivated staff, positive for the high-needs school.  Relationships matter and they aren't built on a Peace Corps-style stay.

And the thing is, some of us do stay.  It strikes me that figuring out why the people who stay choose to do so.  One could assume that we're all lousy teachers; one would be wrong.  I am regularly approached for teaching jobs in which I have not expressed interest at lower-needs schools.  Like many of my fellow stayers, I'm highly trained and actively seek opportunities for professional development (and the funding to go: New York in three days!).   Identifying the factors that make someone likely to stay and creating the conditions that those teachers want seems like a worthy field of study.

Anyway, some characteristics that I have noted in the stayers:

1. We are not out to save anyone.  We are not saints or saviors, and those of us who are white are not the Great White Hope.  This attitude supports sustainable time commitments and building real relationships with families.
2. We really like to teach.  If you really like to teach, you don't leave after two years.  You just don't.  If you really like to teach, you enjoy getting better at it.  If you really like to teach, it feels sustainable to you.
3. We are good at teaching.  Teaching may be art and craft, but some people just have an intuitive feel for it.  If teaching comes naturally, then refining the craft is pleasurable and not hideously time-consuming.
4. We know what we need in our classrooms.  I know I can teach successfully while children roll around the rug, but that the sound of fingers tapping the inside of a desk will drive me out of my mind.  I know that I can't effectively manage detailed line order and seating charts, but that I can teach children how to self-regulate in transitions and encourage the classroom community that enables children to pick their own seats in ways that are equitable and diverse.
5. We know that children need different things.  The teachers who have fidgets, allow controlled walkabouts, understand that needing the bathroom happens and that sometimes you want to be by yourself are the teachers who stay.  They're more flexible and more open to teaching self-regulation as opposed to mandating order. 
6. We believe families are doing their best and seek their input on their children.  If you assume you teach the offspring of incompetent and careless people, it's very hard to feel good about your work (or build relationships).  If you think you know everything about a child after that child has spent a few weeks in your room, you have the temperament for investment banking but not education.
7. We build relationships.  I rarely if ever call a child's home (I hate the telephone - I will text, but generally only for informative/praise reasons.  Discipline at school is my job unless I need input on strategies that work at home).  I am introverted and shy and this can come off as standoffish, so I really have to work at being welcoming.  But I do it.  I have a good memory and collect data about family relationships.  I live in the neighborhood, shop locally, and take the bus.  These thing matter.
8. We demand work-life balance, even when that means we can't do it all.  I am capable of maintaining organized files...if I put in ten hours a week at filing.  I run a couple of school events and lead at least one committee a year.  I could do more, but I'd have to give up things that make me feel happy and well.  I teach better when I am happy and well.  I can manage these tradeoffs.
9. We believe social-emotional development is important and academic.
10. We really and truly believe every child in their class is smart and they believe all children can do well and feel good about it.

So, what do these stayers want?  I think the biggest thing is smaller class sizes.  The smaller the class, the easier it is to build those relationships, really know each kid, determine the learning background condition each student needs to excel, and so on.  So I believe that if we really and truly believe in equity, not equality, we'd be reducing class sizes at high-needs schools.  There are other things, too, but this strikes me as the biggest.

I remain unenthusiastic about the whole "looks like a Kindergarten teacher" thing, but this series about halfway houses in New Jersey is pretty interesting.

Chris Christie spends an awful lot of time ranting about teachers, schools, and unions.  Given that he thinks these centers are high-performing cost-savers, he is either lying, or the schools in New Jersey are actually located in Hell thanks to a convenient multidimensional portal.

Or maybe he's irritated the schools don't churn out adequate quantities of dropouts to keep these private-profit centers even more successful for his political allies.

Oh, so descriptive.

From the New York Times (bold mine):

Dr. Wolff was not one to easily back down. She resembles a kindergarten teacher, with plain eyeglasses and hair tucked behind her ears, but she has spent much of the past two decades immersed in the prison system, interviewing inmates across the Northeast. Along the way, she has become a critic of New Jersey’s halfway houses.

Well, I can't speak for all Kindergarten teachers, but this Kindergarten teacher went out last night wearing a backless dress and ninja boots, to watch another Kindergarten teacher play in a rock band.  Neither had hair tucked behind their ears, and both select stylish spectacles when applicable.

Also this week, I swapped info on tattoo artists with yet another Kindergarten teacher.  Later today, I plan to go purchase a new red lipstick and go to the gym.  At that point, I will tuck my hair behind my ears, since I don't want it to get caught on a barbell or anything.

Needless to say, I now plan to write whenever applicable that a person resembles a journalist, with a downtrodden air, jaded eye, and outdated perspective.

And now you have to fix it.

Yesterday, I got irritated with this liberal thing I see a lot in education circles: the idea that reflection is enough.

It's not.  The purpose of reflection is to encourage future action.  And if your reflection is that something you tried didn't work, that is honest and important.  But if you don't actually change anything, then the reflection was useless.

I see this come up in parent involvement issues.  You hear a lot that some school tried something to get parents active and it only attracted certain parent communities - typically, those that were already fairly involved.  There's some handwringing about that, but the next parent activity?  Is pretty much the same and attracts the same people.

I put serious energy into parent involvement this year, and that meant doing lots of different things to attract a wider spectrum of parents.  Was I totally successful?  No.  So next year I'll try to refine what we did even further.

The other thing is that I did this myself.  I had the help of some parents, but I had learned that the parents at my school were not going to start a PTO without some serious T support.  Our parent liaison was not going to do it.  Our principal was not going to do it.  I thought it was important.  So I got started on it.  Now the trick is spinning it off so I can hand over some of the responsibility.

I get frustrated with change at schools that depends on other people, or that fails once and is never changed again.  School funding sucks.  Many parents are overwhelmed and suspicious of schools.   The conditions suck.  I want them to change.  Until they do, if I choose to get involved in this work then I better be willing to make things happen myself - or at least stop complaining when they don't happen, and wanting to be rewarded for admitting I failed.

True Fact.

Despite teaching at an early-start school and generally arriving there well before 7 AM, getting to professional development by 8 AM is a challenge.

Whether this is due to it being summer, or just that Kindergartners are easier to wake up to than sitting in a chair working on practice, I don't know.

ETA: This is what's driving "pension failure" by the way.

Oh, superintendents.

Generally I wouldn't link to stories that are ultimately part of the Pensions Are Evil storyline.  I think that all workers should be assured a sustainable retirement, and I believe that as a society we have the means - but not the will - to make that happen.

In this case, I am breaking my own rule because the superintendents play some administrator whiny cards that are just to obnoxious to let stand.

For instance, David Meany - retired Superintendent from SCOE - is pulling down a nice $192,000 a year from STRS.  This is more than his highest annual salary.  He'd like you to know that this is fair because he can't take Social Security benefits.

That's true: teachers with pensions aren't going to be receiving any Social Security benefits they earned, nor any their partners earned.  But in Mr. Meany's case, this complaint is offensive.  It's like complaining that you have to buy premium fuel because you drive a Corvette.

(For the record, it irritates me that my fellow citizens are so willing to destroy my pension, but if successful are extremely unlikely to restore my Social Security benefits.  As it stands now, though, my Social Security deposits don't bother me - I believe in a national retirement program and I don't mind supporting it.)

Bob Wells, the executive director of the Association of California School Administrators, does not see why Superintendent pensions - and more broadly, their pay - is a problem.  After all, we have all these NCLB requirements and accountability and stuff, right?  Superintendents could totally lose their jobs now, what with this accountability.

Make this argument in a room full of teachers and they will fall over laughing, then start swapping stories of Superintendent transfer.  Failing in one district is just an opportunity to fail upwards at this job class.  The examples are so legion - Arlene Ackermann, Alfonso Anaya...I could go on, but you get the point.  There's no chance these guys won't vest and pull down big pensions somewhere.

CalSTRS is trying to head off massive pension cuts for all pensioners, current and future.  What with the bad recent returns (a relic of short-term crazy, long-term loss investment strategies courtesy "market-oriented" and overpaid CalSTRS workers) and the difficulty they have in raising contributions (the Legislature has to approve it), they've made some suggestions for long-term solvency.  One of these would cap (with inflation adjustments) pensions at $147,000 annually.  This is an administrative-level pension; I know no teachers (and few principals) who earn that much.

However, the superintendents would like you to know that that is so, so mean.  They will set up their own pension system, or go bother CalPERS to let them in, or something.  I assume this is a threat because they pay in quite a bit given their large salaries, but I find it hard to believe that they aren't taking more than their contributions (no Superintendent starts out making big bucks; they start as teachers).  So I invite them cordially to go ahead and bug CalPERS.

The whole thing bothers me for any number of reasons, not the least of which is that the Superintendents are acting in their own interest against the interest of the teachers who are also counting on CalSTRS.  Yet again, leadership is lacking the courage they demand of their underlings.  A capped pension like CalSTRS proposes is not inadequate, but the possibility of sacrificing one penny is anathema.  Yet teachers are expected to take pay freezes and furloughs in stride.  When the District won't provide supplies, you do not see Superintendents at Target buying crayons. Their teachers will be, though.  Superintendents are willing to gripe to the state that funding is inadequate, but only over cozy meetings with the Governor.  The possibility of refusing to approve a budget within state guidelines, of calling a wildcat strike, of demanding that California fully fund schools - that kind of conduct makes it unlikely a Superintendent will get to hobnob with bigwigs, and therefore they won't engage in it.

In the end, if CalSTRS is legislated out of existence or fails financially, teachers will suffer.  Something tells me Superintendents will do just fine.