teacherken's musings on everything

crossposted at dailykos and myleftwing

Yet again an administration that in theory supports states rights is attempting to impose its will like it tried with Oregon's assisted suicide act. We have previously seen Federal mandates in education in testing and supposed quality of teachers through the rightly infamous NCLB act. Now we find another attempt to impose, only unlike NCLB, this is not a stand-alone piece of legislation, but is instead being done almost in stealth, by sticking a provision into another piece of legislation.

You can read about this in a piece by Sam Dillon in today’s NY Times entitled College Aid Plan Widens U. S. Role in High Schools. Let me quote the first paragraph to encourage your continued reading:

When Republican senators quietly tucked a major new student aid program into the 774-page budget bill last month, they not only approved a five-year, $3.75 billion initiative. They also set up what could be an important shift in American education: for the first time the federal government will rate the academic rigor of the nation's 18,000 high schools.

Using grants of $750 to $1,300 to low income college freshmen and sophomores who have completed

"a rigorous secondary school program of study" and larger amounts to juniors and seniors majoring in math, science and other critical fields.

, but leaves to the Secretary of Education define “rigorous” given that position new and almost unlimited power to interfere with state and local prerogatives in establishing curricula. While the administration says it will consult with governors and local groups, and a department spokeswoman pointing out that participation in the program would be voluntary, note the reaction from the Higher Education community:

But Terry W. Hartle, a senior vice president at the American Council on Education, the nation's largest association of colleges and universities, said the new program "involves the federal government in curricular matters in a way that opens a new chapter in educational history."

"I'm very sympathetic to the goal of getting more students to take more math and science courses, but this particular plan has the potential to turn the Department of Education into a national school board," Mr. Hartle said.

Dillon’s article notes

Like the No Child Left Behind law, the new grants are largely an effort to take a Texas idea nationwide. The legislation is modeled on the Texas Scholars program, begun during Mr. Bush's governorship, which enlisted certain Texas high schools and encouraged their students to take a "rigorous course of study," defined to include four years of English; three and a half years of social studies; two years of foreign language; and a year each of algebra, geometry, advanced algebra, biology, chemistry and physics.

As is often the case with this administration, despite the campaign rhetoric about uniting and not dividing, little attempt has been made to consult with political opponents:

Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, responding to rising anxiety over America's economic competitiveness, sponsored legislation establishing new grants to college juniors and seniors majoring in math, science or engineering. In December, Republican lawmakers working with the administration grafted the House and Senate bills together, adding language requiring the secretary to recognize at least one rigorous high school program in each state. Democratic lawmakers said they were barely consulted.

"We were shut almost completely out of the process," said Representative George Miller of California, the ranking minority member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

What is interesting to note is that there have been efforts by this administration to expand the testing regimen of NCLB to high schools, an effort that has been going nowhere. In one casual conversation on that subject I heard Congressman Miller say that the administration could try but that was one proposal that was dead.

The original proposal was supposed to be done as a straightforward supplement to Pell grants for low income students. That would have been relatively simple to administer, as Pell grants are based solely on need. Students would qualify for yearly grants based on GPA for their sophomore through senior years, with grants of up to $4,000 as upperclassmen majoring in physical, life or computer sciences, mathematics, technology, engineering or critical languages. That GPA requirement will cause problems for institutions like Sarah Lawrence and Hampshire that do not give letter or numeric grades. In theory that is solvable, although for one of my generation it is very reminiscent of the requirements during the Vietnam era of being in the top half of one’s class in order to maintain a 2-S deferment from the draft.

The process of defining a rigorous high school education has been underway for some time. As was noted in the article

After Mr. Bush became president, his administration financed a Center for State Scholars, based in Austin, to spread a curriculum modeled on Texas Scholars nationwide. In the 2006 budget, he proposed supplemental Pell Grants for college freshmen and sophomores who had completed the "rigorous" curriculum outlined in the State Scholars initiative, in which some 300 school districts in 15 states are participating. A House bill closely reflected that administration proposal.

To date, only 15 of the 50 states have participated in this process. The National Governors’ Association has endorsed the idea of a more rigorous curriculum a a requirement for high school graduation, and some states

including New York, extend higher-rated diplomas to students who complete more difficult coursework. Virginia awards an "advanced studies high school diploma" to students who complete four years of English, math, science and history, three years of foreign language, and other requirements.

Such differentiated diplomas are nothing new -- I graduated from high school in NY in 1963, and already there was a distinction between a Regents Diploma and a regular diploma. However such differentiation does seem at least in part counter to the concept of NCLB, even if it at least implicitly recognizes that the educational needs of secondary students are not uniform.

There are political problems with this proposal , which the article identifies. There are perhaps 20 states with no participation in the State Scholars program, and even in some states that do, the proportion of high schools participating is fairly low: 35 of 300 in NJ and only 4 of 180 in CT.

But of even bigger concern is the requirement that applicants have completed a

"program of study established by a state or local educational agency and recognized by the secretary." The bill "would inadvertently exclude over 5.3 million private K-12 school students," the National Association of Independent Schools, which represents some 1,200 private schools, said in a letter to senators last month. The same legislative language may also exclude parochial and home-schooled students.

And of course there are conservative groups that do not want ANY federal involvement in education, as the education policy director of Phyllis Schlafley’s Eagle Forum made clear:

Michael D. Ostrolenk, education policy director of the Eagle Forum, called the proposal "more meddling" by Washington.

"If people in Congress really want to improve the educational system in the United States, they should start by abolishing the federal Department of Education," Mr. Ostrolenk said.

I find myself in a an awkward position on this topic. I do not wish to appear as the abominable No-man on educational issues. For one thing, I absolutely believe that we need to rethink how we do education in this country. That however, does not mean that my answer would be the imposition of more and more requirements, the approach in which the catchword always seem to b e “rigor” or “rigorous.” Look at 80 pound students attempting to walk down a hall with 35 pound backpacks - that is one element of “rigor” that somehow we seem not to ever discuss.

I also worry that the approach contained herein is reproducing the worst of what we have seen recently in educational reform. It seems premised on the idea that more content is the solution. It is not clear to me how increasing requirements will result in greater understanding or applicable skill.

But those are issues that can and should be discussed openly, and would include a variety of stakeholders. Having an issue like this put into non-relevant legislation without consultation with the minority party or with major organizations with expertise and whose lives will be affected is pretty far from the democratic ideals of self-governance that in theory are supposed to be part of our system of government.

Whatever else one can say about NCLB (and believe me, I have probably said it), at least MOST of the provisions were publicly discussed and debated, with an opportunity for input to Congress from a variety of sources. What most bothers me about this proposal is the lack of such debate. I try to follow educational policy issues fairly closely, and this one had not really appeared on my radar screen - I had seen a few mentions in passing on several education policy lists to which I subscribe, but no in depth discussion. Given how little most policy makers understand about education, as is evidenced in the real flaws of NCLB, doing education ‘reform” this way is downright frightening.

To my mind, before we start adding layer upon layer to an already overburdened education system, we need to step back and try to get a clear picture of what we really want from our schools. Unfortunately, education is one of the easiest areas of policy on which to bloviate - everyone thinks s/he is an expert.

I teach social studies. Our lack of historical understanding and true appreciation of the structure of our governmental system makes us more vulnerable to the kind of demagoguery by which the current administration has maintained its control on power. As an undergraduate I majored in Music. I worry that we are moving in a direction that devalues anything that cannot immediately be defined as a profit-making venture, or which cannot be included in some person’s definition of national security. To me a nation without a soul is a great a danger as a nation with insufficient scientists and engineers.

And that raises another point. The intent of this program seems to be to increase the number of people in science and technology, yet this is occurring at a time when many jobs for those with such educational background are being exported - thanks to the availability of broadband capacity it is now possible to perform the tasks done by such people far from the US in much lower wage nations. Will we be educating people for jobs that will not exist? Or is the intent to create a glut of applicants for such jobs in order to drive down the wages received for such work?

I do not believe that educational policy can be made in a vacuum. It certainly should not be made via under the radar legislative action. And to give the power to the SecEd to define rigor ... it would not matter if the SecEd actually had a background appropriate to the task, which Spellings does not .. it is a distortion of the idea of the people having meaningful participation in the making of laws and rules that govern their lives. It is about as undemocratic as anything I can imagine. I would say that it was setting a dangerous precedent, except it is of a piece with this administration’s idea that the Executive knows best, and should the maximum, even unfettered and unlimited, power to implement its policy ideas, anything from the Congress notwithstanding. I would not have given such power to George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. I surely do not wish to do so to George W Bush and his Texas cronies, among which I include the current SecEd.

Enough. I have made you aware, in case you were - like me - not aware. Do what you will, but do something.
Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
Email accepted at "kber at earthlink dot net"
Preface email messages with "teacherken" so I know they are not spam.

crossposted at dailykos and myleftwing


What is the value of a life?

Is an American inherently valued more than people of other nations? Is such a comparison valid? Is it even moral? Why is a teacher writing about this?

I am going to urge everyone who reads this to read today’s column by the incomparable Derrick Jackson of the Boston Globe (and when oh when will he finally win a long overdue Pulitzer for commentary. It is entitled Making Enemies in Pakistan and in part addressed the question I raise. Here are the figures Jackson offers us

an Iraqi killed by the US Military $393

an American killed on 9/11 $1.2 million

an American injured on 9-11 $400,000




Jackson is such a superb writer it is exceedingly difficult to extract from the piece without in someway distorting the flow of his writing. I will offer a few selections, in the hope that if I have not already enticed you to read the entire piece, you will now be so inspired.

The piece is a response at least in part to the recent raid on the border of Pakistan in which in theory we targeted high Al Qaeda commanders. Please note what I have BOLDED in the first selection I offer:

Let us assume that we got some of the key commanders and weapons experts in Al Qaeda. The incident remains bloody proof that we are repeating the Vietnam mistake of destroying villages to save them. If the current reports hold up, we still killed three times more civilians than terrorists in the attack, a ratio we would not accept from our local police, no matter how desperate we are to curb youth violence or organized crime. That is a gruesome parallel to conservative estimates that American forces killed at least three times as many innocent civilians in invading and occupying Iraq than were killed on our shores on Sept. 11, 2001.

Jackson connects the impact of this attack with our failure to win hearts and minds in Vietnam by referring to the attitude of the most infamous of the US Commander’s in that theater, William Westmoreland:

The late American commander in Vietnam famously dehumanized civilian slaughter in our 10-to-1 kill ratio of enemy soldiers by saying, ''The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner . . . life is cheap in the Orient."

Jackson notes that an independent analysis of the US compensation for the deaths of Iraqi civilians has paid less than 1/4 of the claims filed with the U S military. And since I quote figures used by Jackson, let me offer those the two statements from which I drew that data:

According to a 2004 report by Newsday, the US military had given out an average of $393 to Iraqi families whose loved ones were killed or maimed by our bombs and bullets.

Contrast that to the Sept. 11 Victims Compensation Fund. It gave out an average of $2.1 million to families of 2,880 people who were killed and an average of $400,000 to the 2,680 people who were injured.

To provide us with a proper context, Jackson then compares these awards to the payments made for improper deaths caused by U.S. police:

Boston made a $5 million settlement with the family of Victoria Snelgrove, the woman who was killed by a pepper pellet during a rowdy Red Sox victory celebration. New York City made a $3 million settlement with the family of Amadou Diallo, who was hit with 41 bullets when police mistook his wallet for a gun. Riverside, Calif., made a $3 million settlement with the family of Tyisha Miller, who was hit in her car with 12 of 24 shots, accompanied by racist comments.

I would note, although I cannot currently provide a direct reference (The Washington Post search facility is currently unavailable) that one set of illegal arrests of protesters in Washington DC (they were not first ordered to disperse) has resulted in payments many times larger than the payment to the families of each killed by the U.S.

Jackson closes his piece by referring to VP Cheney’s remarks on Thursday where he again conflates 9/11 with Saddam and the Iraqi’s non existent WMD. Let me offer the last few lines without further adieu:

Cheney said again that we face ''a loose network of committed fanatics . . . enemies who hate us, who hate our country, who hate the liberties for which we stand." His response is fanatical acts of needlessly invading countries and destroying a village to kill a terrorist.

Soon, it will not be just our enemies who hate us.

I am aware of the economic arguments that are tendered in loss of life lawsuits in U.S. Courts -- we tend to value lives based on the remaining earning capacity of the individual killed. Thus since I approach my 60th birthday in May, I would presumed to have approximately 10+ working years left, and that at the earning capacity of a teacher, making my death valued far less than a rookie NFL or NBA first round draft choice, who even over the limited professional sports career eliminated by his death would be worth multiple millions of dollars.

Whether or not our economic comparisons among Americans are an appropriate way of measuring life is one problem. Would anyone here be prepared to argue that the life of Jack Welch, formerly head of GE, , or your average rap star, was of greater value than that of Martin Luther King junior, or perhaps that of the Dalai Lama? Based on earning capacity of each individual, we would value Welch and the rap star at a higher rate. That is a problem for our society.

But when we offer so little compensation for the “collateral damage” of lives of those in other nations, we give a clear message that we consider the lives of those people as far less worthy than those of our own people.

Using merely the injury compensation from 9/11 and figures for compensation in Iraq, an injury to an American is 1,000 times as important as the death of an Iraqi.

Whether or not you think I have made an odious comparison, or you agree with me that that imbalance is inherently immoral, be clear on this -- how that disparity will be viewed by others is that we do not care about any except our own. And that will also shape their interpretations of all of our actions.

I welcome your responses to this posting.


Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
Email accepted at "kber at earthlink dot net"
Preface email messages with "teacherken" so I know they are not spam.

Researcher Gerald Bracey has for years run an annual feature in Phi Delta Kappan(for whom he writes a research column) on the state of education.  In the past he made positive and negative awards, in the form of Golden and Rotten apples, for the best and the worst of what he had seen in terms of educational policy in the pas year.  PDK got nervous about the rotten apples, so Jerry has distributed them on his own, via various email lists, and posted a pdf on his EDRRA website (at which you can see previous editions, as well as a link for the Annual report in education.

I think it worthwhile to read the report on the condition of education.  But I absolutely recommend reading ROTTEN APPLES IN EDUCATION - 2005 EDITION (this link will download a PDF file).  You may not agree with Jerry, but he lays it out quite bluntly.  Below you can see the list of awards, as Jerry summarized them in his email.

The "Jimmy Carter Amphibious Killer Rabbit" Award: Margaret Spellings.
The "This Turntable for Hire" Award: Armstrong Williams and the U. S. Department of Education.
The "Co-Mingling of Science With Comparative Religion" Award: The Dover (PA) School Board and the Kansas State School Board.
The "Yes, You Really Can Gather Empirical Evidence to Support or Refute Intelligent Design" Award: Pat Robertson.
The "Chutzpah Only a New Yorker Could Love" Award: Joan Mahon-Powell.
The "Game the System? Moi?" Award: Jeb Bush.
The "Notes From a Distant Planet" Award: Human Events.
The "Big Brother Wants to Watch You Even More" Award: Walter Jones, Dennis Baxley.
The "I'm Not a Researcher" Award: Diane Ravitch.
The "The Enemy of My Enemy Might Still Not Be My Buddy" Award: United Federation of Teachers.
The "Delusions Die Hard" Award: Amy Wilkins.
The "Mike Cohen and Matt Gandal Memorial Confusion of Rates with Scores Award:" The Achievement Alliance.
The "George W. Bush-Style Accountability" Award: Chester E. "Checker" Finn, Jr.
The "Literacy is Vastly Overrated" Award: The State of California.
The "Arbeit Macht Frei" Award: Dan Doerhoff.
The "This is What's the Matter With Kansas" Award, or, "Prima Emienda Derecho? En Kansas, No" Award, Jennifer Watts.
The "Our Lousy Public Schools Really Do Turn Out People So Dumb We Can Skunk the Pubic With Any Story We Want" Award: The Bush Administration.

Please note, I am distributing this for those who may be interested. While I agree with Jerry on most of his assessments, in posting this I am offering no endorsement in the diary of any particular point, although I will be happy as time allows to converse on list with anyone so inclined. This is offered simply for your elucidation. Read the piece (remember, it is a PDF) and then react as you see fit. But remember, on this on Teacherken is merely the message delivery boy, and not either the messenger nor the message.

Peace.

Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
Email accepted at "kber at earthlink dot net"
Preface email messages with "teacherken" so I know they are not spam.

lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, entitled Bring Teachers to the Table . As a teacher, I have long believed that teachers should be part of any attempted reforms of our public schools and educational practices. And as I quoted educational historian Larry Cuban in my ”Blueberries” diary,

Policymakers and others who set out to overhaul schools encounter a fundamental paradox:  teachers and principals who block changes sought by reformers are supposedly the problem, yet these very same educators -- almost three million strong -- are the people who connect with more than fifty million children daily and do the essential work of schooling,  Inescapably, therefore, they also have to be the solution

Thus when addressing the need to react to schools that are identified as in needs of help I saw Reville write

Which approaches to turning around school performance are most successful? Which are practical and affordable?

, I hoped his answer would include teachers. It did.

I will offer a selection that gives the main import. As usual I urge you to read the entire article. And my commentary today will be minimal, as I am running a bit late this morning for our 1st day of our 2nd semester. I need to get to school to turn the heat on!

Here is the guts of that which I wish to bring to your attention

Naturally, the policy discussion migrates away from state bureaucracies. In Massachusetts, conversations on interventions and poor performance have focused on management prerogatives, turnaround partners, and chartering or privatizing failed schools. These strategies, like many others, have little or no research evidence to support their effectiveness.

Conspicuously absent in the debate on intervention has been the role and voices of teachers and teacher unions, arguably the front line troops in any ''turnaround" strategy. There seems to be a belief in some policy circles that school improvement can be accomplished in spite of teachers rather than with them.

Some of the assumptions embedded in the prominent strategies, management prerogatives, turnaround partners, chartering, and privatization imply that teachers are the problem rather than part of the solution, that the source of expertise on fixing school problems is external rather than internal or that current leadership is highly competent. Although each of these assumptions is sometimes true, none is always or typically correct.

Teachers and, certainly, unions don't have all the answers either. They are also sometimes the source of problems, but it is folly to shape school intervention and turnaround plans without extensively consulting teachers on policies and practices.

A common flaw of educational policies is that they take a ''one size fits all" approach to solving problems or meeting challenges. Not all failing schools fail for the same reasons. Therefore, not all successful school interventions will look alike. Our intervention policies will need to take into account the substantial variation in context: communities, leadership, curriculum and teaching, resources, students, demographics, mobility and a host of other factors. Our intervention policies will need to be strong but flexible and responsive to local circumstances. Above all, we will need policies and practices that those charged with implementing see as worthwhile and likely to succeed.

Reville also discusses how to get the unions involved as organizations, and lists some possible interventions. He closes with the following

We don't have much evidence to support any of the most prominently mentioned strategies, but this doesn't absolve the state of the obligation to get involved in helping educators improve teaching and learning in the Commonwealth's most challenged schools.

We already face a shortage of teachers. We can make those changes we do need if we do not include teachers as positive contributors. And there is little reason to assume they will participate positively if our approach to them is hostile and punitive.

Read the piece. Ponder it, offer your remarks. I will be waiting for them.

(crossposted at dailykos, myleftwing, teacherken.blogspot.com)

A few days ago I received on one of my educational lists an email with the author’s Ten Wishes for Education in 2006. I decided for today’s diary to go through the suggestions, one at a time, offering some commentary of my own where appropriate. I have the permission of the author Peter Majoy, to do this, so I will begin by introducing him, using his own words, where appropriate.


Peter is both an English teacher and a published author. As he informed me,

(1) Been teaching since 1965 with a few years in there of related work but not directly teaching in a school system, so I guess I have somewhere around 35 years direct teaching experience; (2) I have written and had two books published through Zephyr Press (a. Doorways to Learning, and (b) Riding the Crocodile, Flying the Peach Pit. Both are about what is phrased "whole brain learning". (3) I am an English Teacher
at Nashua High South in Nashua, New Hampshire.

.

I will offer some more of his remarks about himself later, after we go through the wishes. You will want to know more, and he is an interesting guy.

10 Wishes for Education in 2006
 
1. That the trap of "either-or" thinking about educational reform be consciously trimmed. Where there is something of worth on either side of the aisle, so to speak, it ought to be acknowledged. For example, the charter school discussions sink too quickly into this form of rhetorical dis-ease. Many charter schools and their proponents have made wonderful strides in serving student and community needs. Many have just taken advantage of the failures of public schools and like neo-liberal globalists have tried to appear interested in the "indigenous" local populations only to suck the life out of those communities to serve ulterior capitalist interests.

Peter raises an important point. There are, s he notes, charters and then there are charters. it can be the difference between something founded and run by Deb Meier, or a school that provided means of continuing Hmong culture in Milwaukee, or it can be some of the atrocities I have seen, such as the afrocentric school in DC whose founder claimed a doctorate from a “university” she had founded, or it can be the corporate profit-making places run by various organizations about which you may have read. If we wish to make a difference in education, not everything can be viewed through a lens that provides only dichotomous thinking. I have been keeping an eye on a new public charter high school that is dedicated to peace, and later you will read about Peter’s own involvement with charters, part of the reason for this first point.
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2. That data be treated with enormous skepticism from wherever it originates. The reductionistic temptation to come to simplistic conclusions about educational phenomena poisons and roadblocks conversation about the vision and practice of reform. Those visions and their accompanying practices are either destroyed or romanticized by data. For example, the "data driven" nature of NCLB both destroys the much larger context in which education takes place as well as romanticizes its salvific effect on those very  students whose lives it has ignored in the first place. Surfing its concern to lift all children and teens to a level of achievement equity, proponents of NCLB have had to obsess on their romance with NCLB without having to address all the attendant issues that crush, maim, ignore, and repress whole classes and segments of society. NCLB data is ironically racist, sexist, and classist. On the other hand, opponents of NCLB do the same thing from their side of the sword fight. Public schools somehow become sacred cows and "public school education" is cast as victimized by pressures to privatize. From this back against the wall position, data is spit out along with anecdotal stories of the anxiety producing effect NCLB has on kids via standardized and high stakes testing. Such proofs become scandalously manipulated to support an equal dose of denial regarding open and authentic dialogue on "what is best for kids?"

Data by itself is not necessarily meaningful, and usually requires understanding, analysis and interpretation. How was the data gathered? Why was this data gathered and not other data? Is there anything in the measurement or data gathering process that can provide a misleading or distorted portrayal of the phenomenon the data purports to represent? These are only a few of the questions that one might consider. After all, I could provide, as I once noted to my students, a group of people with an average net worth of 40 billion. That would be a group that consisted of Bill Gates and a street person.
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3. That more conversationalists/debaters/ideologues should put their money where their mouth is: act.  In the end, all the delicacies, both scrumptious and distasteful depending on which banquet one prefers to attend, have to ultimately incarnate themselves in what goes on in schools. If you bark and bellow or howl and hawk from wherever you (and me) proselytize your gospel of educational redemption, you ought to put your money where your mouth is and do it in the schools. The problem is that so much hot air fills so many of these discussions by people, good intentioned or otherwise, who don't do any of it. This reality was most recently brought  home to me at a November 17, 2005 presentation by Jonathan Kozol who spoke of the many days he has spent in classrooms and understood how utterly removed so many politicians and educational rhetoricians are from what real life is like in classrooms and how incredibly intelligent kids are and how responsive they can be when intelligence and love are present in their schools and in their teachers.

This is a key point. Meaningful educational reform will have to include more than it has the voices of those who are responsible ultimately for the implementation of such reform, and whose lives will be affected. I think it somewhat embarrassing then when Governors gathered for a session on education each brought a businessman, but none brought a classroom teacher, or even better, a student whose life is affected by the decisions theorists and politicians think should be imposed. To Kozol’s credit, he hs spent significant time in the schools about which he writes. And although I do read fairly widely in research literature and general publications about educational policy matters, much of what informs my understanding is shaped by my experience as a classroom teacher.
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4.  That one's opinion about what is best in education pass the personal test: would you like to go to the school where the practices you prescribe take place? Sometimes I wonder about this. I imagine that should this be the litmus test, many of the differences would dissolve into simple truths. School should be a place where I am known, where I am challenged, where I am safe, where I am not cookie cuttered into easily manipulated data bits where I disappear into the void, and where I can explore and experience as much of the universe so that I mature and develop a confidence to be both an individual as well as a vital part of the community.

I would add another question to Peter’s and that would be much more pointed -- would you be willing to send your child to such a school? If not, why would you propose imposing on the children of other people?
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5. That Santayana's statement that "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it" becomes a daily mantra for all those truly committed to the education of all our children. What has succeeded and what has failed? Is NCLB just another apparition of a hydra headed monster come back to divert our attention from the real work of education? Does NCLB have its roots in anything at all successful in the history of education?

Here I think I can answer -- the supposed basis of NCLB was the Texas “miracle” - the experience of supposed success in educational reform under Bush as Governor. Only there was no such miracle, and competent scholars attempted to point it out at the time. Unfortunately, some Democratic politicians who are strongly supportive of public education signed on to the program because they thought it would mean more funding for schools from the Federal Government. We are now seeing the results.
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6. That  educational demogoguery, clothed in the language of whatever,  be exposed more often by the following question: Would you please tell me a story from your life or from the life of someone that you know that will prove your point?  When that story is told, discuss it, investigate it critically and with an open mind. Then return the favor with a story of your own......and so on.

Here I offer a caution. I first acknowledge that when Joe Thomas and I had our conference call with Tom Vilsack and he asked for how to help Governors and others communicate about education, we said to tell stories. I am a firm believer in the power of the illustrative anecdote or even extended story. The danger is that one can often find an example that is not representative, thus the risk for partisans of any point of view, including those which I support, could unfortunately be acting here as those in this administration who cherry-picked data in order to make a case for war in Iraq. I do not object, but I do offer these cautionary words.
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7. That assumptions which dull true listening be placed on hold and that the sign of true listening replace it as early as possible in the dialogue, i.e., ask questions that clarify another's opinion so that the wheat of another's position be separated from the chaff. Education is of such utter importance that our disputes ought to be quickly focused on what each of us is really saying. This can only be done by asking questions so that the disputes clarify rather than run the vicious circle of stubborn, willful deafness.

We all need to avoid MEGO syndrome (my eyes glaze over) lest we lose our audience when we are the speakers, or our focus when we are the listeners.
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8. That each of us become socially engaged with the suffering of those around us. I don't know one teacher or administrator who has become committed in this way for whom this commitment does not temper in some way his/her take on educational issues.

I will limit my remarks to this - as a classroom teacher there are many things going on in the lives of my students that outweigh the importance of my rules and deadlines. Unless I am willing to engage my students on this level, I risk the probability that I will lose the ability to keep them interested and focused on what I can offer them academically.
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9. That we realize that education is a political issue and cannot/must not be separated from our views on capitalism and democracy. Those who stress democratic principles favor progressive ideas about educational reform. Those who stress capitalism favor privatization and elitist survival of the fittest  educational structures and practices.  These are the extremes. Everyone mixes their own drink here.

Please, before you criticize Peter for falling into the trap of the dichotomous thinking about which he warned us above, note the last two sentences. This point provides a lens through which to analyze how people -- including ourselves -- approach educational issues.
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10. That we not forget our own childhoods and teen years as we fashion our educational agendas.

Ah, if only!! But besides not forgetting, I would add that we need to be humble enough not to attempt to universalize our own experiences and memories, but rather use them as a starting point to try to understand the possible impact of what we would propose as policy upon those who we claim we are trying to help.


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If you do not already realize how dedicated and thoughtful Peter is as a teacher, I will conclude this piece by quoting without comment most of the rest of his biographical explanation to me. I do so because it is an example of story telling. And were more policy makers willing to take the time, they would find the lives of teachers are full of such stories. Since I offered so much of Peter’s insights above, let me share with you what he has to say about the life from which they stem.

Enjoy

In June of 2003, a program, about which I had been the prime mover, ended. It was called NESA, Nashua Essential School Academy. We were affiliated with the Coalition of Essential Schools and were a school-within-a-school non-tracked program which survived for 7 years until a huge 150 million dollar re-building effort peripheralized us and we decided to end it. It was, in many ways traumatic, but we ended it with great dignity, peace, and self respect. We had over 200 students, a team of 10 teachers, and were recognized for all the reform structures we brought to local education. In our final year, we organized "NESA in November" during which time (a) our incredibly forward looking drama program put on "The Laramie Project", (b) we brought 20 panels of the Aids Memorial Quilt which we displayed for 10 days and which was visited by over 2000 people, and (c) we brought in the Tibetan Buddhist monks from the Drepung Gomang and under the rubric of exposure to world cultures through our social studies program, the monks constructed the Mandala of Compassion in the foyer/entrance of one of our new high schools at which locus one witnessed one of the most incredible displays of silence, wonder and respect on the part of thousands of students and adults. (4) Currently, I continue to teach in Nashua, but am part of the Ashuelot Valley Academy Planning Committee which is trying to bring a progressive charter high school to the Monadnock Region. Because we are progressive, we have chosen what is called the local route in our process of bringing the school into being. It involves grassroots political work and bringing two warrant articles up for a vote. Our first article will be subject to our Town Meeting ballot this March 14. A year later, assuming we get a "yes" vote this March and we get two more approvals, we present a second warrant in March of 2007. If we get a yes at that time, we hope to open our school in the Fall of '07. It is a long journey but it is the essence of the democratic process and if we open, we will truly be a public school. Much more to say about this, as you might imagine. (5) I am married to T...., also a great teacher of a mixed 5/6 grade classroom, and like myself has been doing it her whole life. We have 4 adopted children whom we first fostered. One is now 23 and the others are 18, 17, and 16. So, we fully experience the drama of adolescence here at home, believe me. From a first marriage that ended many years ago, I have two sons. One is a teacher and one is finishing Veterinary School at Tufts.....

I will not try to make that determination for anyone else. But today, I have no doubt how I will measure mine. For twenty years ago, more than a third of my life, I was blessed to be joined in marriage with my eternal partner, known here as Leaves on the Current. That I participate here is due in no small part to our relationship, so please indulge me as I make this small verbal offering in her honor.

Our relationship is much older. I first noticed her when as a teenager she visited one of my music classes at Haverford with the wife of one of my professors. She finds this hard to believe, but when I described what she wore and how she looked she acknowledged it was possible. But our first conversation was an an early Easter morning at the Episcopal church where I had just been baptized. She did not know that I had been watching her, a senior at an elite (then all-girls) prep school. My very first words to here were “so when are you going to discover boys” and her response was :Why, when I go to Harvard, of course.”

Others noticed my watching her, but our relationship did not begin until the following fall, when I encountered her at a suburban train station. We we going in to the city, where she was going to catch another train out to her home. But our train was late, and she missed her connection, so I took her out for a piece of pie and cup of coffee. It was not our first date, that would be six days later when I took her out for dinner, but we mark the beginning of our relationship as of that day, September 21, 1974. She was 17, and taking a year off before Harvard to seriously study ballet, I was 28 and working in data processing and living in a rented room.

Within a few weeks it was clear that we were in love with one another. If I may steal some lines from the wonderful Sally Fields - James Garner movie, “Murphy’s Romance”, she was in love for the first time in her life, me for the last.

We had that year before she went off to Harvard. Then there were 4 years of my commuting to Cambridge Mass once or twice a month, followed by 3 years of greater separation while she attended Oxford with a Marshall Scholarship. We became each others closest friend and trusted confidant, but because our time together was so precious and limited we postponed some of the hard work at making a relationship work. Finally in 1982 we were in the same city and we really had to work on the relationship.

We moved to Arlington Virginia, and finally on December 29, 1985, several hundred people came to watch us get married, and then joined us at our reception at historic Oatlands Plantation near Leesburg, still decorated for the holidays.

We are both difficult people, but I am much more so. I do not really believe in myself. I am actually fairly shy, although an extravert, and easily get depressed. I worry that I am not making a difference. And here I am married to this very attractive, and brilliant and charming, young lady. In Myers-Briggs terms we probably should clash -- she is an INFJ, me an ENFP, with both the extraversion and perceptor qualities to the extreme. She is a neatnik, I am not, she is more oriented towards cats, me towards dogs, she late night me very early morning (probably a product in my case both of rising at 5 to practice piano before school as a teen and far too many days spent in monasteries as an adult).

And yet - as in any relationship there is commonality. We both love music, although our tastes do not always overlap (I draw the line at New Age, and except for Mary Chapin Carpenter and Willie Nelson she has little tolerance for Country). I was a music major in college yet discovered early in our relationship that she probably knew more abut Beethoven than did I. When she shared her high school yearbook picture with the accompanying quote she was surprised that I could recognize the passage and name the T S Eliot poem from which it came.

It may seem strange that I would take the time to write and post something like this on a blog that is devoted mainly to political issues. Bear with me. There is a reason for this.

It was Leaves who encouraged me to take the chance and get involved in the (abortive) campaign of Fritz Hollings for president in 1983, and who has always been supportive of my subsequent volunteering for campaigns, local, state and (Howard Dean) national. She encouraged me to write my thoughts, and I would not have begun blogging except that she insisted that my ideas and insights were worth sharing with others.

We do not always agree. For example, when I began to pursue the idea of doctoral studies in education she did not understand why I would want to do it. When I got a free ride for 3 years from Catholic, she became very supportive. When I decided to withdraw with a dissertation proposal almost complete, she - who had taken more than a decade to do her doctorate on a part-time basis - could not understand why I went so far and did not complete it. But as she has seen my writing on education in other fora she has accepted and supported the decision I made (even though she will periodically remind me that the university would probably love to have me back). She was very supportive last year when I took on the extra burden of work for my national board certification as a teacher, and bought me a bottle of champagne to celebrate when I found out I had passed.

Leaves is a superb editor -- often I wish that she were available to review what I write before I post it. I assure you there would be far fewer typos...and even fewer infelicities of expression! But it is not that which I value most. Not her skill as writer, which I greatly envy, not her superb intellect, which she has applied in many different arenas -- as a writer on dance, the environment, politics, religion.

No -- what I want to pay tribute to on this day is her soul, her heart in the old sense of that word. She is incredibly caring. I am an exceedingly difficult person, and yet as the years have passed she has made it absolutely clear that nothing I could say or do would ever cause her to stop loving me. In my moments of deep depression and despair (of which over the past 30+ years there have been far too many) she has always been there.

As I struggle to find balance in my life, she may not always understand where I am going, but she will try to help, to accompany me as far as I will allow her, and even then keep going.

I was able to become a teacher, to take the better part of a year off to get my training, because she increased how much she worked, taking time away from her own interests, in order to make it possible for me to explore an idea that was not completely formed.

Her caring shows in the time she makes for her nieces and nephews. particular one nephew having a difficult time whom yesterday she took to see Nutcracker. It is evident in the love she showed toward our Sheltie when Espeth was getting elderly - not a dog person, she warmed and her heart melted. It is obvious when a cat curls on her lap and she will give that priority over anything else she had planned.

Her heart and soul come out in her passion for preserving the environment, and her willingness to work against the death penalty, even standing in silent vigil as an execution took place in Jarrat tVirginia at the Greenville Correctional center. Her depth of feeling is in her poetry (which she does not often share). Some have even seen it in her few posts at dailykos.

Ours is a partnership -- I provide some structure in day to day things at which she is not so skilled (such as changing light bulbs -- she is not always the most practical -- and I do most of the shopping and almost all of what cooking occurs), and I have been able to serve as a sounding board for some of her ideas, and review some of her writing to help her. I have encouraged her intellectual pursuits as she has encouraged mine, to the point where it is not clear where we will put any more books in this house.

We often talk about political and social issues. This has been true for our entire relationship. We both see that we have a responsibility for a larger world. It was as a result of the comments I would make in these discussions, or when we would watch various talking heads shows, that led Leaves to encourage me to write down my thoughts and insights for a larger audience. So if you do not like what I post here, she is at least partly to blame.


Tonight I will take her to our favorite restaurant, reserved nowadays for truly special occasions. We will drive more than an hour into Rappahannock County for a late dinner at the superb Inn at Little Washington. It has been several years since our last visit. We both appreciate good food, and the ambiance is truly superb and appropriate for a reflective evening like this.

I am posting this very early in the morning, because I want the rest of this day free to be with Leaves on the Current, my partner for all eternity. I will not be online that much today. People may ignore this, or may comment as they see fit. I offer this to honor Leaves, to be sure. But I also offer it in another spirit -- many here are able to participate in this electronic community because of the support of other people. We may have spouses, parents, children, friends, significant others with two up to four feet, who tolerate or even actively encourage our participation. In our passionate involvement here, I hope we all take time to give them the thanks for the support they give us, both in our endeavors here and in all else we share in life.

I am having a very happy 20th wedding anniversary.

In 1994 Harry Blackmun finally came to the conclusion that fair application of the death penalty was impossible to maintain.  In his dissent in Callins v Collins he wrote the memorable phrase

From this day forward I shall no longer tinker with the machinery of death.

  While I acknowledge that the clear language of the 5th and 14th Amendments allows for the possibility of a capital sentence, I now find myself  becoming an absolute opponent of the death penalty.  My reasoning will be different than that of Blackmun.  It will be moral and ethical, influenced by history and reason.  It will also be because of recent events, including Abu Ghraib and the kidnapping of Tom Fox.  And although a majority of Americans still support the death penalty in at least some cases, I am no longer sure I can morally offer support beyond a reluctant vote for anyone who is unwilling to challenge the rationale for capital sentences.  In this piece I will explore my reasoning.

As an adolescent raised in a Jewish family that attended a synagogue that included survivors of the Holocaust, I felt that any ex-Nazi the US could capture should be executed.  The Eichmann trial in Israel took place my sophomore year in high school, and I remember very few of my acquaintances who opposed his sentence of death.     I started with that as a baseline - that there were some acts which were so heinous that the only was of addressing them was by execution.  In my early readings of the Constitutional material I was influenced by the clear language in the Bill of Rights, reinforced by the post-Civil War 14th Amendment, which allowed a sentence of death provided due process of law had been followed.  It was only with the issuance of the verdict in Gideon that I first began to consider other possibilities.

Gideon v Wainwright as the case was called in SCOTUS (it was originally filed as Gideon v Cochrane) did not address capital cases.  It extended the right of counsel at trial in all state felony cases, thereby overturning a previous case. Betts v Brady asserted in 1942 that a person accused of a felony was not entitled to a free lawyer absent the possibility of a capital sentence.    Since my mother was a lawyer (at the time of the issuance of Gideon she was an Assistant Attorney General for New York State) it was logical for us to discuss what turned out to be the sole unanimous decision of the Court term.  Although she was no a criminal specialist, she was an appellate specialist, and thus I learned that the 1932 case of Powell v Alabama had asserted that people were entitled to lawyers in most criminal proceedings, but left implementation of the decision up to the states, and that historically even though 12 of the original 13 states had considerably broadened access to lawyer beyond British practice (which until the 1830's did not allow a lawyer in most felony cases), there were no provisions for free lawyers for those who could not afford a lawyer.  When I asked, my mother acknowledged that given the complexity of our legal system it was inherently unfair for anyone defending themselves not to have access to a lawyer.

The logical question that followed our discussion of Gideon was whether there had been people sentenced to death who had not had the assistance of counsel.  She acknowledged  that prior to Betts in 1942 there were cases in state courts.  I asked why there should be a distinction between a death sentence and a sentence of life without the possibility of parole, and her response was that it was largely to assuage the blood lust of society.  

I was at the time approaching my 17th birthday.  As a senior at Mamaroneck (NY) High School I was taking a very rigorous AP American History course with a very tough teacher who made us read - original documents, commentary - and think and argue.  We had been through a lot of constitutional material, and although we did not discuss this case, what we had done in that class of very bright students (the "weakest" school any of the 13 of us attended was U of Wisconsin, which had a superb history department  -- there were people going to Princeton, Swarthmore, Haverford [me], MIT, Cornell, Harvard [Tom Horne, now Superintendent of Public Instruction in AZ], etc.) had prepared me to wrestle with the issues this case presented to me.

Haverford was at the time of my entrance in 1963 still officially Quaker.  While it would be another 39 years until I officially applied for membership (at which time the chairman of my committee was my freshman roommate), I began to be influenced by Quaker thinking and practice.  I remember one debate in our freshman corridor late at night that addressed the death penalty.  I do not remember all of the details, but I do remember arguing that there certainly some cases so horrible that the only recourse for society to take was to execute the person, lest people who were angry withdraw their consent to the social contract and take matters into their own hand.  I was challenged in return by someone, I do not remember who, asking me if that therefore justified the lynching of blacks in the South because they had been accused of raping a black woman.  My response at the time was to note that lynching was an extra-legal action, but that if a society thought that rape was a horrendous enough crime, why would it be wrong to apply a death penalty?  I was challenged again  -  what if the application of a sentence of death was never applied to a white raping a black but only to blacks raping whites?  Having spent the summer before college very active in Civil Rights, including attending the August 28 March, that challenge brought me up short.  I did not have an answer, and it was the first time I encountered what for many was to become a key part of their argument against the unfairness of the death penalty, how it was unequally and inequitably applied.

And yet, I held to my position that there were cases for which there should be no argument.  I thought back again to Eichmann, and I would argue that had Hitler been captured, how could we reward him by keeping him alive as a prisoner.

I have long been interested in the workings of SCOTUS and our legal system.  Thus when the Furman v Georgia decision was issued in 1972 (when I was at Haverford for the 3rd and final time - I did not graduate until shortly before my 27th birthday) it caught my attention for several reasons.  First, the successful advocate, Anthony Amsterdam was, as I soon found out, a graduate of Haverford.  Second, two justices, Brennan and Marshall wanted to go much further than the per curiam decision and argue that the death penalty should be unconstitutional in ALL circumstances.  It was the first time I had been aware of members of the highest court taking such a position. And yet, despite 6 justices having found the application of the death penalty unconstitutional in 1972, 4 years later it was reinstated in a 7-2 decision (Brennan and Marshall dissenting) in Gregg v Georgia.  Here I offer the summary found at www.oyez.org (an invaluable resource for those interested in Court cases):

Question Presented

Is the imposition of the death sentence prohibited under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments as "cruel and unusual" punishment?

Conclusion

No. In a 7-to-2 decision, the Court held that a punishment of death did not violate the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments under all circumstances. In extreme criminal cases, such as when a defendant has been convicted of deliberately killing another, the careful and judicious use of the death penalty may be appropriate if carefully employed. Georgia's death penalty statute assures the judicious and careful use of the death penalty by requiring a bifurcated proceeding where the trial and sentencing are conducted separately, specific jury findings as to the severity of the crime and the nature of the defendant, and a comparison of each capital sentence's circumstances with other similar cases. Moreover, the Court was not prepared to overrule the Georgia legislature's finding that capital punishment serves as a useful deterrent to future capital crimes and an appropriate means of social retribution against its most serious offenders.

Of course, it was easy to see some holes in the reasoning used by the majority.   Still, the idea that some crimes were so heinous that - provided care was applied in determining the sentence of death - reinforced what I had believed for a number of years.

Over the years I continued to read when death penalty cases arose.  I found myself becoming more inclined to look for reasons not to execute, although I probably could not have given a coherent reason.  Part of what was influencing me were changes in my personal life.

In 1974 after some major turmoil in personal life I was baptized as an Episcopalian.  I spent that summer in an Episcopal Benedictine monastery.  I did a lot of reading, praying and meditating.  And that September, I began the relationship that let to Dec. 29, 1985, when Leaves on the Current and I were married (and don't worry  - we have a significant celebration planned for this Thursday).  Both of these events began to shape my thinking, even before the issuance of Gregg.  I began to study scripture systematically, even obtaining a Masters of Religious Study with a concentration in scripture from a Roman Catholic Seminary.  Several things struck me in my studies.   I found it difficult to understand how someone who seriously read scripture could be blasé about the death penalty.   After all, Jesus had said the vengeance belonged to the Lord, and at least for me part of the justification for capital punishment had been satisfying the need for vengeance.  There was also the clear example of the intervention of Jesus to stop an `execution" (or lynching, depending upon your interpretation) of the woman taken in adultery.  His challenge that only those without sin be willing to cast the first stone brought me up short.  From a Christian perspective, it raised the very real issue of who could ever apply such a harsh punishment.  It challenged not only the death penalty  -- if one thought about it, it challenged the entire nature of our criminal justice system.  While I did not attempt to resolve the issue systematically, it caused me to do some reading (while in the monastery), about my Jewish background.  I came to understand that while the death penalty existed in theory, there was little evidence of its application in any circumstance where Jews had the ability to administer their own laws  (here I remind readers that it was the Romans who actually, according to the Gospel account, executed Jesus).  Judges would always look for extenuating circumstances.  And then I remembered debate I had skipped over in 1961 and 1962 about Eichmann, about whether even for him it was appropriate for Jews to execute someone.  I would later read Hannah Arendt (and still later have one very brief conversation with her about this in 1971) in which she presented the case that Israel, having convicted Eichmann, should have considered simply turning him loose, since no punishment applied by men could hope to erase the damage he had done - establish his guilt legally, but not attempt to punish for it (my memory of her actual words have faded).

My relationship with the woman who would eventually officially become my partner for eternity also began to influence me.  She is opposed to any taking of life, and in this she is consistent, opposing both the vast majority of abortions (exceptions for rape and to save the life of the mother) and capital punishment.  We argued on this subject over many years - we both take issues we view as moral very seriously.  

In the late 1970's for reasons I will not hear rehearse joined the Orthodox Church.   There I learned that early Russian Christians took so seriously the idea of resist not evil that two princes, Boris and Gleb, refused even to defend themselves when the assassins sent by their brother came to kill them, and that for most of its history after the conversion of Vladimir in Kievan Rus Russia did not have a capital sentence.  I  began to realize that there was a distinction between life with parole and the death sentence  -- the latter was a denial of the redemptive possibilities in Christianity.

I began to approach a position, but was unwilling to follow it to its logical conclusion.  It seemed clear to me that to argue any act (or even series of acts) committed by an individual could irrevocably put him beyond the reach of God's forgiveness (in Christian terms, the saving self-sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross), was a blasphemy  -  such reasoning made that individual equally powerful with Jesus / God.  That any individual could reject the mercy and love of God was the essential element of human freedom, and without that freedom man could not choose to love God   -- after all, love is the act of a free creature.  I found examples of Orthodox theologians who wrote speculatively that even Satan would eventually be redeemed, that even the Devil had not irrevocably placed himself beyond God's redemption.  And I encountered a piece of canon law ( not consistently enforced) that went back to the very earliest years of organized Christianity, that any many who had spilled blood was ineligible to be ordained presbyter (priest) -  the logic was that one who had spilled blood could not properly perform the rites of the bloodless sacrifice of the Eucharist.

I still was not totally opposed to the death penalty.  I was willing to question it, but at least in theory could imagine serving as a juror and voting for such a sentence.  I probably first expressed this when I went with my wife to a meeting of a Virginia group opposed to Capital Punishment  -  it was in a Church on Leesburg Pike in Bailey's Crossroad.  I do not know if Tom Fox was at that meeting, although Leaves knew him at that time from their joint activity.   This was sometime in the 1980s.  Virginia allows exclusion from capital cases of any potential juror who has a philosophical opposition to the death penalty.  I remember telling them that I was probably an important ally, since none of them could ever serve on a capital case - their membership in what I believe ws then called VASK (Virginians Against State Killing) was sufficient grounds for their exclusion.  Were I asked if I belonged to or supported any such group I could truly answer in the negative, as I could similar answer if asked if I had a philosophical opposition to the death penalty.  If voir dire went no further, I would be acceptable to the prosecution.

But by now my position had altered  --  I would still grant the idea of the death penalty in theory  -- for the Hitlers, Pol Pots, and Stalins.  But I had already decided that there was no case under American jurisprudence of which I was aware, recent or historical, for which I was willing to support a sentence of death.  I knew it was unlikely that I would be sufficiently questioned that this would become clear.

Sometime in the 1980's, after 1985, I was called for jury duty.  I do not swear an oath, but affirm.  In my first voir dire, I had to remind the judge that I had that right under Virginia law  - that brought attention to me, attention that would eventually lead to my being disqualified from every criminal pool by the prosecutor (I found this out from a friend in the Clerk's office):  in Virginia, for a normal 12 member jury, 18 people are seated at a time, and each side MUST disqualify 3  -- that hides who is being disqualified by which side.  I was always struck by the prosecutor.  I have never liked the idea of swearing, had noted that the Constitution allows the oath of office to be administered by oath or affirmation, and as a Christian (which I still was) took seriously the admonition of Jesus not to swear like the Pharisees but to simply let me yeas be yeas and my nays be nays.

I tell you this because it was the prosecution which struck me from a capital case.  Realistically, it should have been the defense, save for a memory lapse.   The case was of a separated and getting divorced couple.  He had gone to her home to get her to sign some papers, and in a fit of rage because he feared losing custody of their son had killed her.   One question asked of all jurors was whether they had ever known or experienced such a case in any personal fashion  - a legitimate concern to be explored.  I answered in the negative because of a memory block.

In 1985 I had wandered out of my office on the Monday after western Palm Sunday to buy a Philadelphia Inquirer -- it was that night that Georgetown and Villanova were to play for the NCAA division one championship in basketball, and I wanted to read how it was being covered in Philadelphia, especially as I had a rather large bet with a coworker who was a Georgetown supporter.   The lead story was of a shooting the day before at a suburban church.  An estranged husband had shown up where his wife and two little girls were attending church with her parents.   He shot and killed all 3 of his family with a rifle, turned the gun on himself, but at the last second flinched, shot in the air, then threw himself backwards.   Her name was Linda Moser, and I had trained her as a commuter programmer.  She was my immediate subordinate for several years, and there were marital difficulties even then, as she had outgrown him.

I called my former place of employment.   I had left that office in 1982 to move to our Washington Office, and had left the company in 1984.  People were in shock.  So was I.  I took the afternoon off because of how it struck me, and even that night as Villanova shot 10 for 11 in the second half I could not totally lose myself in the game.

Returning to my jury service, had I not been struck by the prosecution, one could argue that my participation in the deliberations might have served as a basis for overturning the verdict, except for one thing   -- I would not even in that case have voted for the death penalty.  As it happens my memory of Linda's death came back about the time the jury retired for the sentencing phase  (and he was sentenced to death, even in liberal Arlington).  For all practical purposes I would not vote for a death sentence, but I was still not philosophically opposed.

My position had remained the same over the many years.  And then one month ago yesterday, Saturday Nov. 26, Tom Fox and the other CPT team members were seized in Baghdad.  I learned of it early the next morning via email.  I did not know Tom that well, although we had both attended Langley Hill Monthly Meeting. Our little Meeting community quickly became involved in addressing the needs of Tom's family, our members, and responding to the news.  At first we attempted to keep the names of the individuals and the organization out of the news, although by the start of the work week that was already becoming impossible as events overtook things.  I had told my wife confidentially by phone midday Sunday which is when she reminded me of her knowledge of Tom through their anti-death penalty work.

As the next few days path, and I learned more about Tom, and the consistency of his life in opposing violence, I began to reexamine some of my own attitudes.  It was while conversing with the spouse of one of the members of his support committee that I came to realize that I was having my own moment like Harry Blackmun.  In my case it was not the issue of tinkering with the mechanisms of death.  It was a realization that my long espoused position was untenable.  I could no longer make the distinction between American jurisprudence, where I was reluctant if not yet absolutely opposed to applying a capital sentence, and other cases overseas.

I do not consider myself a Christian per se, but clearly there are parts of Christian belief that influence me.   As a longtime seeker, and several times teacher of comparative religion, I am also influence by the teaching of other great faith traditions, and the non-violent part of the Buddhist tradition also has helped shape some of my attitudes, as have my Jewish background and quite obviously my current Quaker affiliation and commitment.

While recognizing that other may disagree with my reasoning, I now find the idea of state sponsored killing repugnant and unacceptable.  Not in my name, as the Quaker songwriter John McCutcheon wrote in a song so entitled.  I find, even absent Christian theology, something inherently immoral in the idea that one group of humans will irrevocably decide that another human is beyond being changed, of repenting, of becoming productive.  In that sense I am also probably also opposed to life with no possibility of parole   -  I might set very high standards in some cases, with a long period of incarceration,  but I have trouble with the idea of permanent incarceration for similar reasons.

It is not merely that mistakes can be made.  I look at the reasoning that has been used in capital cases and I am appalled.  In Herrera v Collins Scotus ruled that once a person has been convicted the presumption of innocence disappears and thus the person is not necessarily entitled to continued legal action (e.g. habeas corpus suits) to introduce further evidence to demonstrate innocence.   While O'Connor's concurrence notes

the execution of a legally and factually innocent person would be a constitutionally intolerable event

similar language does not appear in Rehnquist's majority opinion, which allows for the possibility of the execution of an innocent person.  This to my mind allows for something totally abhorrent -  at least to my moral sensibilities.  And I find it shocking that there are prosecutors who oppose DAN testing or reopening of cases in any fashion which might demonstrate that an innocent person has been executed.

I used to make a distinction between US jurisprudence and certain "horrible" actions in other nations, such as the Nazis.  I can no longer accept that reasoning.  I recognize that it bears a striking parallel to the arguments of the current administration justifying actions done outside the US, whether at Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib, that our laws do not apply (even thought the actions are being done by US government officials in the name of the nation and the people).  It would parallel their false argument that we have to fight terrorism [how od you fight a noun?] over in Iraq so we won't have to fight it here.

Immoral actions remain immoral, regardless of where they occur, despite any justification  we may offer for their occurrence.

Finally, my increasing reluctance to offer political support (beyond a reluctant vote) for any politician unwilling to take a stand on this issue.   We desperately need moral leadership in this nation.  At one point the vast majority of people tolerated chattel slavery, lesser rights for women, many other things the vast majority would now find repugnant.  Without someone willing to take a stand, to provide leadership, such change does not occur.  After all, it is hard to imagine someone (except perhaps John Yoo) attempting to legally justify sentencing someone to death without having the full assistance of competent counsel  [yeah, Pricilla Owens didn't think a lawyer sleeping through the trial denied the assistance of competent counsel  - so there are others].  

I think people are willing to be challenged.  Russ Feingold was alone in opposing USA PATRIOT Act.  He was targeted in his reelection, yet ran stronger than he ever has.  And soon we will have one or more clear examples of innocent people who have been executed, and that may sway some people away from their support for death sentences.

But my argument is against execution of those who are clearly guilty, and even those who do not repent.  My argument is not about them  -- it is about us.  It is about how our insistence on maintaining this judicial punishment diminishes us in the eyes of most of the civilized world.  That is important. But it is insufficient.

If we grant that there are certain things that are not acceptable for moral and humane people to do, such as own another human being, then we need to examine all of our actions.  How can we justify torture?  How can we justify denying basic rights to those who are not citizens  even as we require them to abide by the same laws and pay the same taxes?  How can we decide that some human beings are not fully human beings, and thus are entitled to be treated with less humanity?

I realize this is very long.  I do not expect that many will take the time to read it, or that it will receive much commentary, or stay visible in any place it is posted for any period of time.   I feel that it is a statement I had to make.  I am doing so in environments devoted to political issues because this is as important a political - and moral - issue as we face.

I accept that others will come to different conclusions, for what they will see as very good reasons.  As for me, I can no longer accept the idea of judicial killing.  

crossposted at dailykos,myleftwing,boomantribune, and teacherken

Toyota used to have  a slogan "You asked for it, you got it."  Many in the progressive/liberal blogosphere have been demanding  that  our political leaders listen to what we at the grassroots have to say.  In education this has now happened.

As many here may know, Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa began a process of soliciting ideas from the grass roots over at  HeartlandPac.org.  My participation in this, and in a conference call, eventually lead to Governor Vilsack himself posting here at dailykos.

The results of this ongoing conversation about education has now been systematically compiled and is available for your perusal.   Below the fold I will explain more, and offer an overview of what is available.  I strongly encourage all who are interested in education (which should be all of you) to continue reading this diary.

Without recapitulating the entire history, for those who do not know, Gov. Vilsack established an organization to solicit ideas from the grassroots, whether identified experts or merely interested citizens.  He set up a website at which people could post their ideas.   The site also offered ideas that were currently being triedby Democratic Governors around the nation.

The first topic on which Gov. Vilsack wanted to focus was education.  As a result, his internet guy, Kevin Thurman of BlueStateDigital, sought to get a number of educational bloggers to participate in a conference call with the Governor.  I was one of the two participants in one phone call, and eventually I blogged about it, among other places at dailykos.  As you will see if you click on the link, that posting got a lot of traffic.

It also got a response from the Governor, as you can see at A Response to TeacherKen and the DailyKos Community.  

I also crossposted a response I made to one of the Governor's postings at HeartlandPac, entitled A Response to Tom Vilsack.   This also got a fair amount of traffic.

I list these three item because they are among the sources of the ideas that Gov. Vilsack is now distributing.

If you go to HeartlandPac, you will see a link on the left-hand side to download a PDF of the 60 page report put together as a result of the dialog.  Kevin has assured me that it will also be available in html within the week, if you want to wait.

I am going to offer -- with permission  -- the table of contents to give a quick sense of what is offered, and the  the beginning of the Executive Summary, so readers can see how much input from the grassroots is involved. (WARNING - since I am cutting and pasting from a PDF, the formatting will have been slightly changed from how it appears in the actual document - and I apologize for html formatting problems).

Here's the TOC:

Table of Contents    

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY                            3  

EDUCATION IDEAS                                  10

Early Education                                   11

Length of School Year                             14

Length of School Day                             16

K-12 Education                                   17  

School Construction/Overcrowdin               25

Curriculum                                        27

Testing                                         31  

Teacher Quality                                   34

Violence in Schools                              40

School Administration                             41  

Parental Involvement                              42

Higher Education                                  45

Global Competition                                 51  

Miscellaneous                                   52    

ONLINE EDUCATION RESOURC                    56

Online Education Resources: Organizations 56

Online Education Resources: Blogs              59    

And the Executive Summary:

Executive Summary    

The Heartland PAC website www.heartlandpac.org was launched August 1, 2005.  The mission of the PAC is twofold:  To elect governors and other state officials, and to create a virtual  marketplace of ideas to bring communities without borders together to offer ideas and best practices to candidates who want a different outcome on Election Day.   We believe the best ideas and practices come from communities engaged in problem solving.  The Heartland PAC website's objective is to broaden the definition of community by offering a forum to those people who want to engage in problem solving.   In September, we launched the first single topic discussion on education. We challenged participants to submit their own ideas and best practices on education so that we may share them  with you.  The discussion ranges from a Japanese education program to a heated exchange about the length of the school year.   While there is no consensus or silver bullet, the document underscores both the importance of education and the shared yearning to solve longstanding problems.  Whether the discussion topic is early childhood, K-12 schooling, testing, curriculum or higher education, the discussion shows  real people in their own words, who cared enough to offer thoughts of their own to engage in the discussion.   Below is a summary of the ideas we recorded from participants. After the summaries, which are organized by category, you can read more about the ideas in the words of the authors.    

_______________

Early Education (Pg. 11)

   In this section, Gov. Tom Vilsack, joins former Gov. Jim Hunt of North Carolina, as well as  Sara Mead of the Progressive Policy Institute and Janet of Keokuk, Iowa, to discuss ideas on how to improve the quality of early education and pre-K child care:    

 - Gov. Tom Vilsack | Child Care Facilities and Education

Gov. Vilsack discusses a program that provides parents with detailed information about child care facilities.

 - Chris Correa | Brookline Education Project and Children's Health

Chris Correa discusses a study showing how successful education programs improve children's health.  

 - Janet from Keokuk, Iowa | Child Care Licensing and Education

Janet offers an idea on how to ensure that child care programs complement investments in early education.  

 - Gov. Jim Hunt | Smart Start

Gov. Hunt discusses North Carolina's Smart Start child care program and its many successes.

 - Sara Mead | Education Equity and Early Childhood

Sara Mead discusses how the quality of early education dramatically affects inequality in our communities.  

_____________

Length of the School Year (Pg. 14)  

   In this section, Gov. Vilsack joins two members of the DailyKos web community, Roddy and Amie Erickson, to discuss the merits of the American school calendar:    

 - Gov. Tom Vilsack | A Response to TeacherKen and DailyKos.com Community  

Gov. Vilsack discusses different ways of increasing children's instruction time.  

- Roddy @ DailyKos.com | Origins of the School Year

Roddy argues that the structure of the American school year is out of date.

 - Amie Erickson | How to Make the School Year Longer

 Amie explains that it may be best to phase in any changes to the school year.

_______________

 Length of the School Day (Pg. 16)  

In this section, four DailyKos.com members explain ideas regarding the length of the school  day:    

 - Transmission @ DailyKos.com | Moving Back School Start Time  

Transmission argues that starting the school day later makes it easier for children to learn.

 - JHsu @ DailyKos.com | More Efficiency, Not More Hours

JHsu argues that making the school day longer would fail to solve the problems that our  schools face.

 - Historys Mysteries @ DailyKos.com | Making More Time for Creativity

Historys Mysteries suggests that the school day be lengthened to make more time for  creative pursuits and individual instruction for students.

 - TarheelDem @ DailyKos.com | The Two Hours After School TarheelDem argues against increasing the length of the school day, but says that kids need  to do more than watch television when they get home from school.

The foregoing should give a sense of how much the input is from the grassroots, including as you can see postings made by people at dailykos, for example.

Let me make clear that my posting of this in no way represents an endorsement of any future political aspirations of Tom Vilsack.  It does, however, represent an aknowledgement of and an appreciation for the endeavor he has made to listen and to make available more widely the ideas on various topics that those at the grassroots level are willing to offer.  That is not the only source for the material presented  -  there are inclusions from recognized experts such as Andy Rotherham of the Progressive Policy Institute, and from Governors of things they are already doing.  The inclusion of the Governors is important because they are in the main the target of this effort by Vilsack.  He wants to empower Democratic Governors and gubernatorial candidates with the best thinking possible on key subjects.  

Education was the first topic to be addressed in this fashion.  The Governor has also asked for the ten key words people would use to say for what the Democratic Party stands, and he is about to begin accepting ideas on medical and healthcare issues.  

I would hope that all who read this will take the time to explore the report.  I will not selectively quote further, because there are so many differing ideas offered, and because the report does not attempt to come to a conclusion -- that is not its purpose.  While it comes in at 60 pages, the amount of text is actually far less, and the end, as one can see in the Table of Contents, includes a list of resources relevant to the topic.  Methinks this may prove to be a useful document to have, either maintained in electronic format on your computer, printed down so it can be marked up, or both (which is what I am doing).

Please, take the time to explore.   And also, consider going to HeartlandPac.org and participating yourself.


Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
Email accepted at "kber at earthlink dot net"
Preface email messages with "teacherken" so I know they are not spam.

Washingtonians know Hawk and Dove as a classic Capitol Hill establishment that has been around for several decades, as the name should make clear. On Tuesday Dec 6, Paul Hackett, Democratic candidate for the US Senate had a fundraiser / get to know the candidate event. Having given money to Hackett’s special election race against Jean Schmidt, I was on the mailing list, and receive an electronic invitations. Since one of the hosts was Kevin Thurman, internet guy who put in in contact with Tom Vilsack, I thought I would attend. What follows is a semi-coherent reflection on the 3 hours I spent there.

The event was scheduled from 6-8. I spend far too much time at the establishment, normally when I am waiting for my wife who works nearby at the Library of Congress. Thus I arrived at 5:30, grabbed a beer and said hello to my friend the day manager Paul. I then around 5:45 wandered to the back room where the event was being set up. I remained until 9:30, well after the event was “officially” over. During my 3 hours I had a number of interesting conversations, including people who ahd served with Hackett in Iraq, at least one of whom is still on active duty, several key members of his campaign staff, others who there just to support him, and also with Kevin, noted above.

This will not be a stenographic account of the events, not even of Hackett’s formal remarks, if they can be so described. It will include reference to remarks he made to the crowd as a whole as well as several comments made directly to me or others. It is far more my general impressions, buttressed by specifics where relevant.

My first set of remarks is about people who served with him in Iraq. I talked with four, one a civilian female, three males who had been in the Marines (one still was). All were incredibly supportive, even though at least two were registered Republicans, one of of whom held a high ranking position on a Republican congressional staff (I promised not to be more specific, even though this individual was there with the knowledge of the person from whom s/he worked).

I served in the Marines (stateside only) in the 1960’s. That one’s fellow Marines, subordinates, superiors or equals (I will not specify) believe in and will support you is high praise indeed. While I did not see combat, I know that ultimate loyalty is to those with whom you serve, for your life may depend upon them. This is most true of the trust one places in one’s commanding officer. That people whom served under the command of Paul Hackett support him is very high praise, trust me.

Hackett is very “direct.” To put it another way, he is blunt, says exactly what he thinks, even if it might not be the politic thing to do. I remarked on this to several people, including both Hackett and his campaign manager. I offered the following thoughts.

(1) Americans will accept someone who speaks directly (even bluntly) what s/he believes, but once you start down this route you cannot back off because others tell you it is not “political” or “smart”.

(2) Americans want their political leaders not to be - how shall I say this - mean, nasty, demeaning to their political opponents. They want leaders who can recognize that people can honestly disagree about issues without demonizing their opponents.

(3) Americans want people able to seek out and work on those areas where common ground can be achieved.

BTW both agreed with me on these points.

Since this a holistic reflection, I will not try to recapitulate all I heard and observed. I note that Tim Ryan, elected to the House from Ohio when he was 28, showed up to introduce Hackett. I remember Ryan from the 50th birthday party for Howard Dean at Capitol City Brewery in 2003, where I had talked with him. I told him how much I respected him for being willing to take a stand and endorse Hackett now - after all, this could still be a contested primary.

When I first met Hackett he displayed what I consider an appropriate sense of humor, although I recognize that all who read this might not agree. I stated my name, my service serial number, and added “reporting for duty.” He immediately responded “Don’t do that, it reminds me of Kerry!” and we both chuckled.

When Hackett spoke to the crowd of about 100, his remarks covered a large amount of territory. Let me hit a few highlights.

He didn’t think it was the government’s business what you did in your bedroom or what you had in your gun case.

He worried that we would be the first generation to leave the country worse off than we received it.

He made it clear that he opposed the war, but that as military they followed the legitimate orders of the policy makers. He noted as well that he wishes he was still with his Marines, who as one of his former subordinates pointed out to me, will be returning to Iraq in June.

He had, in a side conversation with someone else, had said that those who thought that Iran was going to take over because of the relationship between Shi’a in both Iran and Iraq don’t understand the culture - that Iraqis are Arab and the Iranians are Persian, and that over the long term the two simply are too different to sustain a close relationship.

He described that Democrats as being the party of fiscal responsibility and - and I hope this is close to what he said - national security. He hit two other points as well, but right now I have brain lock - I did not take notes. Actually I wish I had an audio tape, because his remarks were so pointed and concise.

On Iraq -- he was quite critical of those who would set an arbitrary end date for withdrawal. He noted that the military will carry out the orders of the policy makers, but that it should be the military’s professional judgment of how and when to draw down troops.

I could go on, but you should already have a sense of what I think of Hackett. I was impressed far beyond the surface impression one can get from most politicians. There was not a lot of the normal “candidate-speak” which one encounters far too often here around DC.

BTW - slightly off topic . Also present was Andrew Duck, who will be the Dem candidate against Roscoe Bartlett in Maryland’s 6th CD. Duck is a retired career army officer who also served in Iraq. As it happens, several of his nieces and nephews attend the hs at which I teach, and another is associate director of admissions of the college from which i graduated and for which i do volunteer work in admissions - I know that nephew well,which shows how small the world really is.

I could go one with many more details. That might or might not be productive. let me give my general sense.

1) Should Sherrod Brown compete for the Senate nomination, he will get his clock cleaned.
2) Hackett has a real chance to win in Ohio. DeWine does not have a high approval rating, and Hackett has a real ability to draw support not only from Democrats, but also from republicans and libertarians (and he repeatedly mentioned both).
3) This is a man who is in it for real. He mentioned both privately and publicly that he was not satisfied with the close loss to Schmidt - as far as he is concerned, nothing other than a win is acceptable.
4) Anyone who encounters Hackett directly as I did is likely to look for a way to offer support. You may not agree with him on all issues (I don’t), but you will respect his forthrightness. Thus I have volunteered to serve as a resource person on education policy, even though it is not one of his top issues. I don’t intent to impose my viewpoints, but to help him clarify and best express his own views.


This is the end of my remarks. I hope they are useful to someone.




Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
Email accepted at "kber at earthlink dot net"
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My normal focus is education. And on more than one occasion I have written that we cannot decide how to address problems in our schools until we can decide on the purpose those schools are supposed to serve. But I have come to realize that there is a question of greater precedence, and that is reflected in the title of the piece.

One purpose our schools serve is to help us fulfill our hopes and aspirations for the future of our society. While I am not myself a parent, as a teacher I see how much parents want schools to empower their children for the future. They may disagree as to how they should be empowered, just as we may disagree whether the purpose of schools is to train people for the economy or to be citizens or some other goal. But rare are the parents who do not want the best for their children in the future.

So what are our hopes and aspirations for our society? What kind of nation do we want? And do not the answers to these questions shape the kind of politics we do as well as the kinds of schools we desire?

I cannot myself formulate a clear and concise answer to these questions. I know I am not alone in struggling. I note things like Gov. Vilsack's’ challenge at HeartlandPac to define what the Democratic Party stands for in ten words or less. While I have a personal antipathy towards such a reductionism to soundbites, I nevertheless applaud the striving towards a clear statement of that in which we believe.

I am afraid I am too verbose for such an exercise. I justify that prolixity by arguing that the ideas are too subtle for such a limited number of words. And then I realize that I have to start somewhere. So I will offer a few as of yet preliminary and tentative thoughts. The order doe not represent any kind of priority or structure. Nor do I pretend that the list below is even in the same galaxy as an overall philosophy. It is merely a compilation of some thoughts that are constant issues, at least for me.

I want a society and a nation that wants good for all. That is, I do not want to be part of a society that defines success for ourselves - as a nation or as individuals - only in the structure of a zero sum game where the advances of one can only occur because of the diminution of others.

I want a society and a nation which dos not define success merely in economic terms. Increasing levels of consumption and expenditure are not necessarily a sign of health, not even economically. They may instead indicate a spreading cancer of amorality.

I want a society and a nation which truly values diversity, within our boundaries and in the world writ large. Our form of government and economy are not perfect: if they were, we would not have the high levels of infant mortality, of financial inequity, of functional illiteracy, and yes, of crime and incarceration, that we do. We should value our differences, and use them to find a commonality that celebrates those differences rather than suppresses them. We should be able to honor those - nations and persons - whose values and ways of life may be very different than our own, so long as they are not hostile to us. Therefore we cannot, if we wish to be moral, be hostile towards those not hostile towards us.

I want a society and a nation that sees each individual as unique and irreplaceable. That does not mean that I do not value community. But the richness of our community as a society comes from our willingness to embrace the different gifts each can bring rather than insisting upon a common mold to be imposed upon all of us.

I could go on, and at some point I may try to form this into a more coherent statement. But as I start another school week, I thought I would offer this in the hope that others will share their ideas.

We should not expect to find agreement on many things, at least not easily. That is not the purpose of this posting. We must offer our ideas in a spirit of openness, to attempt to learn from one another. In a sense that which I ask is not dissimilar from what many of us now believe about the political process. We have, those of us who in the various grassroots movements of the Dean campaign, come to believe that reform can best be done from the ground up. Similarly, I believe that a national discussion on what kind of nation we can and perhaps should be, while it can be provoked by leaders willing to encourage it, as I believe a few have demonstrated, is best done by starting at the roots. And for this kind of approach the blogosphere is an ideal medium. We can offer our ideas, listen to those of others, discuss, and try to find elements of commonality even as we recognize those areas in which our visions do not overlap completely.

What say you? What will you offer to this discussion? We cannot afford NOT to have your vision. It could be the most important thing we hear. It is a task for all of us. Please speak.
-------------------

Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
Email accepted at "kber at earthlink dot net"
Preface email messages with "teacherken" so I know they are not spam.

crossposted at myleftwing and dailykos

It's time for an education related diary.  Because a lot of my time and energy are involved with the situation of Tom Fox (kidnapped American peace maker) I do not have much time for my own commentary.   So today I thought I would bring your attention to two recent studies published at the peer-reivewd but electronically published (and free) journal Education Policy Analysis Archives.  Then publication is worth scrolling through to see previous reports.   I wont' offer much commentary on either in the diary, but instead offer without comment the information released by EPAA (as it is commonly known) in the abstracts, which are posted to a large number of educationally related lists.  If you are interested in either  teacher preparation or the question of school choice and whether it improves test scores, both are worth the read.


The first is on the question of alternative tgeacher preparation programs, with a special focus on the heavily touted program Teach For America.   Here I note that my experience and observation is that one does not become a truly effective teacher by and large until one has several years of experience, which is why if someone tells me they plan to spend one or two years teaching before getting on with their lives I raise real questions.  It is not, in my mind, that they won't offer something more than what their students were previously receiving in the way of instruction, but that it represents a lack of commitment which in some way invevitably shortchanges those they teach and those with whom they work.   That is my point of view, and it was not changed by reading the article.

Here's the release:

EPAA has just published Volume 13 Number 42.

The article can be accessed directly from the

Recent Articles listing at the journal homepage:

                   http://epaa.asu.edu

An abstract follows:

         Does Teacher Preparation Matter?

       Evidence about Teacher Certification,

   Teach for America, and Teacher Effectiveness

             Linda Darling-Hammond

              Deborah J. Holtzman

                Su Jin Gatlin

             Julian Vasquez Heilig

              Stanford University

Abstract

Recent debates about the utility of teacher education have raised questions about whether certified teachers are, in general, more effective than those who have not met the testing and training requirements for certification, and

whether some candidates with strong liberal arts backgrounds might be at least as effective as teacher education graduates. This study examines these questions with a large student-level data set from Houston, Texas

that links student characteristics and achievement with data about their teachers' certification status, experience, and degree levels from 1995-2002.

The data set also allows an examination of whether Teach for America

(TFA) candidates-recruits from selective universities who receive a few weeks of training before they begin teaching- are as effective as similarly experienced certified teachers. In a series of regression analyses looking at 4th and 5th grade student achievement gains on six different reading and mathematics tests over a six-year period, we find that certified teachers consistently produce stronger student achievement gains than do uncertified teachers.

These findings hold for TFA recruits as well as others. Controlling for teacher experience, degrees, and student characteristics, uncertified TFA recruits are less effective than certified teachers, and perform about as  well as other uncertified teachers. TFA recruits who become certified after 2 or 3 years do about as well as other certified teachers in supporting student achievement gains; however, nearly all of them leave within three years. Teachers' effectiveness appears strongly related to the preparation they have received for teaching.

Citation: Darling-Hammond, L., Holtzman, D. J., Gatlin, S.

J., & Heilig, J. V. (2005, October 12). Does teacher

preparation matter? Evidence about teacher certification,

Teach for America, and teacher effectiveness. Education

Policy Analysis Archives, 13(42). Retrieved [date] from

http://epaa.asu.edu/....

The entire issue of school choice is an important political and social issue.  It is a major policy iniatiative on the right, claiming issue of liberty and freedom.  It has been championed, especially in the form of vouchers, beginning with Milton Friedman.  One argument used on its behalf is that it provide the marketplace of competition, which will therefore force schools to improve.  So any study that analyzes ACCURATELY (there are others that do so selectively) the impact of choice programs is an important contribution to this important policy debate.  Further, given the emphasis in NCLB on test-based accountability, the we need a coneptual framework that allows us to look at two key policy issues simultaneously, which to a degree this report does.  So here's the second release:

EPAA has just published Volume 13 Number 41.

The article can be accessed directly from the

Recent Articles listing at the journal homepage:

                   http://epaa.asu.edu

An abstract follows:

    On School Choice and Test-Based Accountability

                 Damian W. Betebenner

                    Boston College

                   Kenneth R. Howe

                  Samara S. Foster

               University of Colorado

Abstract

Among the two most prominent school reform measures currently being implemented in The United States are school choice and test-based accountability. Until recently, the two policy initiatives remained relatively distinct from one another. With the passage of the No Child Left Behind

Act of 2001 (NCLB), a mutualism between choice and accountability emerged whereby school choice complements test-based accountability. In the first portion of this study we present a conceptual overview of school choice and

test-based accountability and explicate connections between the two that are explicit in reform implementations like NCLB or implicit within the market-based reform literature in which school choice and test-based accountability

reside. In the second portion we scrutinize the connections, in particular, between school choice and test- based accountability using a large western school district with a popular choice system in place. Data from three

sources are combined to explore the ways in which school choice and test-based accountability draw on each other: state assessment data of children in the district, school choice data for every participating student in the district

choice program, and a parental survey of both participants and non-participants of choice asking their attitudes concerning the use of school report cards in the district. Results suggest that choice is of benefit academically to only the lowest achieving students, choice participation is

not uniform across different ethnic groups in the district,

and parents' primary motivations as reported on a survey for participation in choice are not due to test scores, though this is not consistent with choice preferences among parents in the district. As such, our results generally

confirm the hypotheses of choice critics more so than advocates.

  Citation: Betebenner, D. W., Howe, K. R., & Foster, S. S.

(2005). On school choice and test-based accountability.

Education Policy Analysis Archives, 13(41). Retrieved

[date] from http://epaa.asu.edu/....

Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
Email accepted at "kber at earthlink dot net"
Preface email messages with "teacherken" so I know they are not spam.

Yesterday Alternet featured a piece by Mollie Ivins entitled Standing Tall Against McCarthy in which she uses the occasion of viewing George Clooney's film on Edward R. Murrow, "Good Night, and Good Luck" as the occasion to inform those who did not know about John Henry Faulk. She also tells a story about Murrow's commitment to freedom of the Press. Since I cannot write about what is most on my mind (not yet - and I will explain when I can) today I thought I would draw attention to hois wonderful piece by Ivins. I will offer an introduction, a number of snippets, plus some equally brief remarks of my own. I do urge all to visit the link for Alternet to give them the traffic, and to consider supporting them for the wonderful work that they do.

John Henry Faulk was a very popular radio figure  who got caught up in the anticommunist rages of the mid 1950's.Part of his problem came about because he was explicitly against the blacklisting that was used to silence anyone who was seen as not pro-American or to por-communist  -  in otherwords, anyone who disagreed with the point of view of certain self-appointed guardians of what was right for America (if it sounds familiar, that is because it is absolutely relevant to our time and age, which is of course part of the point and power of Colleny's film).

Enough intro.  Now some Ivins.

The intro to the piece

Watching the new film "Good Night and Good Luck" about Edward R. Murrow reminded me of John Henry Faulk and his own heroic struggle against McCarthyism. Well, okay, Johnny did actually wage a gallant and valiant fight, but since it was John Henry, it was also weird and funny and full of improbable characters -- what is it about Texans that we can't even be heroic without being comical?

In the insanity of the times, blacklisting had become an institutionalized protection racket. An outfit of professional commie-hunters called AWARE, Inc., run by a guy named Vincent Hartnett, was kept on retainer by the networks, major ad agencies, and big sponsors to vet performers for commie sympathies. The more "commies" they found doing anything from soap operas to soup commercials, the more money they made. This gave them quite a financial incentive to find "communist sympathizers." Should a network or agency refuse to play along, Hartnett's friend Laurence Johnson, a grocery magnate from upstate New York, would pull the sponsor's products from his grocery shelves until they caved in. The American Legion would chip in with a boycott of the product, accusing Proctor and Gamble or whoever of being part of the plot to undermine America.

After Faulk and others took an explicitly anti-blacklisting position during a campaign for union office

Johnny was cited in AWARE's bulletin "Red Channels" on seven counts that were either completely false or distorted crap. Johnson came to New York and went up and down Madison Avenue pressuring Johnny's sponsors to drop his show. Some did and CBS eventually fired him even though his ratings were excellent.  

Faulk decided to sue.   The case is what eventually roke the blacklisting system, but it took 6 years to get heard, and financially and professionally ruined Faulk.  Ivins does not think he regretted it one bit.

Fualk hired Louis Nizer, perhaps the greatest trial lawyer of his day, but also very expensive.  Nizer agreed to take what was for him a nominal fee of onloy $10,000, far more than Faulk had.  He could only raise about $2,500.


Here's what happened next, as told by Faulk:

"As I was sitting at my desk at CBS, racing my mind for someone to call and borrow money from," he later recalled, "Edward R. Murrow called me from his office upstairs. He said he was terribly glad that I had filed the suit and that Carl Sandburg had sent word, 'Whatever's wrong with America, Johnny ain't.'"

Johnny chugged upstairs and laid the financial problem before Murrow who said, "Tell Lou Nizer, Johnny, that he will have his money tomorrow." And then Johnny protested:

        Look, Ed, I can't borrow $7,500 from you. Hell, I might lose my job.

       And even if I win the suit, there may be no money to repay such a

       sum as that.

Ed looked at me evenly and said, "Let's get this straight, Johnny. I am not making a personal loan to you of this money. I am investing in America. Louis Nizer must try this case. These people must be brought into court. This blacklisting must be exposed."

Faulk later learned Murrow had mortgaged his house in order to pay Nizer.

Ivins notes that Faulk remained uncomfortable about ahving borrowed the money, which he was never able to repay.

Let me close with Ivins final two paragraphs, as she writes so well that it would be criminal for me to try to summarize her thoughts or her words:

The Iranian journalist Shahla Sherkat, editor of the impossibly brave magazine Zanan (Women) in Tehran, says journalism in her country is like walking a tight rope -- you have to be very careful where you set your feet or you will fall (be disciplined by the state). Sherkat and other third world journalists face torture, prison, or death if they venture too far, but continue to press the limits anyway. Johnny Faulk felt that those who caved into or even played along with blacklisting and McCarthyism risked nothing more than their status -- prestige, access, country clubs. He thought if people had shown more courage, McCarthy never could have gotten started in the first place.

It does not seem to me that Faulk's rawer, truer courage lessens Edward R. Murrow's. Murrow took a lesser risk, but had more at stake. Only those who were close to Johnny knew how wistfully he regarded that lost career. And how toward the end of his life he was simply thrilled to be back on television -- on a show called "Hee-Haw!"

In a time when those with dissenting views have again been attacked, when there are again organizations (Brent Bozell or Reed Irvine, anyone?) dedicated to eradicating such contrary expressions, or when we see commercial interests  (Clear Channel or Sinclair broadcasting companies) acting in fashions similar to Aware, or when far too many business interests seem unwilling to be supportive of free and open public discourse, I found this story a bracing reinforcement in my strong support of free expression.   Thus I wanted to be sure that more people were aware of it, and of the valiant efforts of John Henry Faulk on behalf of us all





Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
Email accepted at "kber at earthlink dot net"
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but worth reading under any circumstances is the annual lecture for the John Woolman Memorial Association of Mount Holly NJ given by Dan Seeger.  Entitled Commerce, Community, and the Regulations of Universal Love, it is a pdf file with pictures.   Since this would take over 5 minutes to download on a dialup line, youu can choose instead the stripped down version without the 17 photographs and illustrations.  

Let me give the opening paragraph to illustrate

Ruin is the destination to which the United States is rushing headlong.  We look at our political leadership and see that everything is for sale, that all political decisions are reduced to economic decisions, that indeed we are on the verge of having no political system, only an economic system.

Seeger's lecture is an appropriate offering in memory of John Woolman (1720-1772), a Quaker tailor who lived in Burlington.  As you can read in Wikipedia he was a major influence in persuading Quakers that they should not keep slaves, and himself refused to do any work that might be involved with slavery.   He followed the Quaker teachings on simplicity in his own life, and he abided by the Frfiends Peace Testimony by opposing the French and Indian War.

Here is a snippet from the Wikipedia article

In 1754 Woolman wrote Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes. He refused to draw up wills transferring slaves. Working on a nonconfrontational, personal level, he individually convinced many Quaker slaveholders to free their slaves. He attempted personally to avoid using the products of slavery; for example, he wore undyed clothing because slaves were used in the making of dyes. Whenever he received hospitality from a slaveholder, he insisted on paying the slaves for their work in attending him.

Woolman worked within the Friends traditions of seeking the guidance of the Spirit of Christ and patiently waiting to achieve consensus. He went from one Friends meeting to another and expressed his concern about slaveholding. One by one the various meetings began to see the evils of slavery and wrote minutes condemning it.

In his lifetime, Woolman did not succeed in eradicating slavery even within the Society of Friends in the United States; however, his personal efforts changed Quaker viewpoints. In 1790 the Society of Friends petitioned the United States Congress for the abolition of slavery. The fair treatment of people of all races is now part of the Friends Testimony of Equality.

.

Most relevant to the Seeger lecture is Wooman's famous essay A Plea for the Poor or A Word of Remembrance and Caution to the Rich, which if you have never read you should.  I will offer only one selection from this relatively brief and yet quite powerful piece of writing:

If a wealthy man, on serious reflection, finds a witness in his own conscience that there are some expenses which he indulgeth himself in that are in conformity to custom, which might be omitted consistent with the true design of living, and which was he to change places with those who occupy his estate he would desire to be discontinued by them--whoever are thus awakened to their feeling will necessarily find the injunction binding on them: "Do thou even so to them."

Enough of introduction.  Let me offer a few selections from Dan Seeger.  I regret lacking sufficient time to make this a throroughly organized diary.  I do want to make people aware of the work, and to encourage them to read Seeger's piece.  Thus I will offer selected passages with little commentary.

Relevant given what has just happened with Duke C:

Politicians, lobbyists and economic operators have become interchangeable. Businesses pay to play.  They kick back contributions to the political parties, give key political hacks lucrative jobs in their firms, and support the party program.  In return they receive tax breaks, the loosening of regulations, helpful treatment from government professionals, access to the nation's common resources which they then sell at enormous profits, and permission to use a repertoire of tricks to suppress the market and limit competitive pressure.  

After going through a number of troubling economic statistics from others, Seeger offers the following:

A very troubling aspect of the situation is that even the measure of economic wellbeing which remains in the United States seems to depend upon our continuing aggression against the earth itself, the ultimate provider of our survival, and on an ever more desperate need to go to any lengths to ensure a flow of natural resources like oil and minerals to ourselves from the poverty-stricken political communities which sit on top of these resources in foreign countries.  

Most of the lecture is derived from reflecting on the Woolman essay about the poor, and Seeger will focus on 3 key points.  I will try to give a sense by offering Dan's words, without overburdening you with too much text.

W oolman unequivocally states that our possessions and our prosperity are gifts from God, and that the resources we find at our disposal ought to be treated as a trusteeship which we must employ to further God's purposes in human society. It is, of course, common in Christian worship, and when asking the Lord's blessing before a meal, to give thanks for what we have, and to credit God as the source of everything.  These are, after all, commonplace sentiments of Christian piety to which Woolman is giving voice.  But to what extent do Christians actually believe these sentiments? Once grace is over and the dinner table conversation about worldly affairs begins, are not we more apt to regard our assets as just deserts for our own hard efforts, and do we not ascribe to ourselves an absolute right to dispose of these resources as we see fit?  This sentiment which so contradicts the professions we made when saying grace is apt to be most starkly expressed when the subject of taxes arises.

 So let us consider the nature and origins of wealth.  

Remember that Woolman had seen how much of the wealth upon which many depended in the US was dependent upon the labor of slaves, and had been troubled by it.  I will note that many of us today often do not stop and think how much of our olwn spending goes for products and services that are produced in conditions that are the modern equivalent of slavery.  And even when we attempt to shop wisely perhaps patronizing outlets that sell the goods produced in 3rd world cooperatives, the conditions for those overseas do not seem to change.  After all, many people overseas work long and hard hours.  Why are they not able to "succeed" and build fortunes?

The problem is that economic transactions in these Third World settings are limited to what are called self-enforcing transactions - transactions the gains from which are realized by each party at the moment and in the place that the transaction is made.  and order and currency, even by millions and millions of such transactions.  Selfenforcing transactions are ubiquitous in societies which remain impoverished.  How does a poor market economy of peddlers in bazaars become a rich market economy like that of Western Europe?  

Here the role of the government will become increasingly important, according to Seeger.   I will not quote his entire analysis, which you should read on your own.   But I will offer this:

All private wealth is a creation of the community; without the government and the community individuals may have possessions only in the way a dog possesses a bone, but that is all.

Economists, in their turn, are naive in their tendency to deal with economic questions as if government were some sort of outside force, instead of understanding that government and economics are intrinsic to each other.   They are naive in their tendency to over-emphasize the "privateness" of property, without duly recognizing its inherently social character.  They are naive in their assumption that there can be sensible conversation about economics which is value-neutral, which does not in some final sense allude to the proper use of things, as John Woolman repeatedly does in his writings.  

I am beginning to run out of time to work on this.  Therefore I will conclude this very disorganized diary by simply offering several more quotes from Seeger, and again urging you to go and read the entire piece.

Economists like to present the free market system as a meritocracy - it rewards those among us who are brighter and who use their superior talents to make a greater contribution to community well-being.  This supposition contains the germs of two very difficult questions: how does a value-neutral discipline such as economics pretends to be test this hypothesis "scientifically" without a concept of community wellbeing or social good; and even if it is shown that rewards are allocated according to social contribution, how can it be shown that the rewards are commensurate in some way with the resulting good?  But leaving these questions aside, the meritocracy idea, while it has some measure of validity, simply ignores the degree to which factors of merit are outbalanced and overwhelmed by the degree to which a modern market economy is a kind of lottery.  

I said earlier that the discipline of economics, imagining itself to be a kind of science, seeks to function without reference to ethical values.  There is however, one respect in which values do enter conventional economic theory, in that it does value efficiency, and without declaring efficiency to be an "ethical" value, does nevertheless act as if it is the highest good.  Whatever will increase wealth most efficiently is deemed the best course.  For a nation considered as an aggregate, this measure of wealth production is known as the Gross Domestic Product.

There are a number of problems with this commonly used measurement often employed to lull citizens into complacency with assurances that everything is getting better.  For one thing, the index will measure as positive economic production all the rebuilding which will occur as a result of hurricane Katrina, but it will not take account as a deficit of all that the hurricane destroyed. The GDP would also count as a positive value the overexploitation in the present of a limited resource, which upon exhaustion will leave people impoverished in the future.  

But the most telling shortcoming of this often bandied about number is that it takes absolutely no account of inequality.  It uses wealth creation as an index of the success of an economy without giving any attention to distributive justice.  More and more wealth going to fewer and fewer people, even to such an extent that the living standards of a majority were falling, would show as a positive GDP.    

There are three observations that must be made about the phenomenon of the tragedy of the commons.

One is that although the problem is framed in terms of pastures and livestock, it is by no means a problem confined the segment of society which deals with farms and animals.  Fisheries, forests, oil and mineral deposits, public highways, and national parks are all commons.  The air in the atmosphere and the water in lakes, streams, rivers and the ocean are treated as commons.  Some of these commons are used for their extractable resources, some are used as waste dumps.  Some are used for both purposes.  In the cases of some commons, what is extracted is renewable provided it is not over-exploited; in other cases the resource is strictly finite - once used it is gone forever.

The second observation which should be made is that we have been habituated to thinking of the commons as infinite in comparison to human need.  In many historical circumstances this was true.  It hardly mattered how a lonely frontiersman in North America disposed of his wastes.  But even in the past the natural world was not as infinite and inexhaustible as an idealized view of the golden olden days might lead us to imagine. There have been many times in history when populations have collapsed and civilizations have vanished due to the overexploitation of the natural resources upon which they depended. . . .

The third thing that should be observed about the problem of the commons is that one of capitalism's most dangerous flaws is that it has absolutely no inherent method of dealing with it.  No all-wise invisible hand of the marketplace steps forward to tell us when to refrain from over-exploiting the environment.  

A verting the calamity towards which our nation and world are heading due to a dysfunctional political economy will depend upon a reform program which expresses the following seven perspectives, at least:

1. Wealth must be understood as the product of the political and social arrangements which made its accumulation possible, and not be viewed solely as the creation of the individual or small group which may claim it as a private possession.

   
   

2. Government and economic activity are intrinsic to each other.  Government both makes economic activity possible, and provides the necessary means for guiding such activity in directions which serve the common good.

   
   

3. Every economic transaction, every economic arrangement, every economic policy has an ethical dimension which must be made explicit and which must be evaluated in the process of determining the reasonableness of the exchange. The idea that economic study can be carried out as a morally neutral science is a myth.  John Woolman puts it succinctly: We cannot discuss property rights without a concern for what is righteous.

   
   

4. Given the essential role of government, taxation is a good thing, and paying taxes may be one of the best uses we can make of our money.  While citizens need to be engaged to be sure that government resources are used wisely and effectively, there is no evidence that, in general, government is less efficient than the private sector, where the costs of numerous extravagances and dishonest practices are routinely passed on to consumers.

   
   

5. Markets are a useful component of the economic order, but there are profound economic issues and problems which markets are incapable of addressing and which must be resolved by other means.  Mutual coercion mutually agreed upon (democratic government regulation) is a key item in the armamentarium of additional coping mechanisms.

   
   
   

 6) The earth is the ultimate source of all wealth.  It is finite, and is in imminent danger of being irretrievably over-exploited.  All economic activities must be pursued in a way which guards the longer term sustainability of the planet's resources.

7) Maintaining regimens of government regulation which are effective requires constant vigilance.  Rules governing the regulation of an industry should be simple and equitable.  Complexity is the enemy of honesty.  A firewall needs to be established to prevent staff rotation between the regulator and the regulated.

Finally, here is Seeger's conclusion:

To quote John Woolman: "The Creator of the earth is the owner of it. . . His tender mercies are over all his works; and so far as his love influences our minds, so far we become interested in his workmanship and feel a desire to take hold of every opportunity to lessen the distresses of the afflicted and to increase the happiness of the creation. . .Wealth is attended with power, by which bargains and proceedings contrary to universal righteousness are supported; and here oppression, carried on with worldly policy and order, clothes itself with the name of justice and becomes like a seed of discord in the soil."

Devising a just economic order for the future will be an exercise in social ethics and spiritual vision.  It is a work which will bring joy and fulfillment, but it will involve effort. God, the creator and owner of the earth, both enables us and requires things of us. The economic system of the future cannot be rooted in greed and self-centeredness, but must acknowledge the divinely ordained interdependence of all parts of the earth. Let us, then, strive to ensure that human laws and arrangements become consistent with the fundamental truth of things, so that they express what John Woolman calls "the regulations of universal love."  

Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
Email accepted at "kber at earthlink dot net"
Preface email messages with "teacherken" so I know they are not spam.

I want to devote my diary today to a posting that is not directly on education, albeit intimately involved with it. After all, between DevilsTower and myself the Dailykos Recommended list saw two fairly significant education diaries yesterday.

Instead I want to explore the question of whether the behavior of children today is significantly worse than in previous years. The impetus for writing this is an piece in today’s NY Times entitled Kids Gone Wild by Judith Warner, an author and radio host. The title of my diary is derived from the 7th graf in which we read

Whether children are actually any worse behaved now than they ever have been before is, of course, debatable. Children have always been considered, basically, savages. The question, from the late 17th century onwards, has been whether they come by it naturally or are shaped by the brutality of society.

So if children’s behavior is worse, does that mean our current society has made them so?


As is my normal practice, I will focus on particular passages in the article and offer my own observations and commentary. Readers are of course encouraged to use the link in the intro to read the entire piece, which is not that long, if it might be of interest to them (and to ensure if they must that I am not “cherrypicking” a la the Bush administration only those parts that support a predetermined position).


I caution readers that I have a strong opinion on this subject, derived from my 11 years as a public school teacher, having taught grades 7 through 12. I also caution them that it might be a mistake to assume what that opinion is before you read further.

After stating at the beginning that the idea “kids should be seen and not heard” might be due for a comeback, the author notes in the first graf

American society seems to have reached some kind of tipping point, as far as tolerance for wild and woolly kid behavior is concerned.

She quotes polling behavior that says 70% of Americans consider children’s behavior significantly worse over the past few decades, and as an equal annoyance with “obnoxious” cell phone users. She then offers the following example:

The conservative child psychologist John Rosemond recently denounced in his syndicated column the increasing presence of "disruptive urchins" who "obviously have yet to have been taught the basic rudiments of public behavior," as he related the wretched experience of dining in a four-star restaurant in the company of one child roller skating around his table and another watching a movie on a portable DVD player.

Here I might note that I have seen adults in high class restaurants who talk far too loudly as if everyone else were interested in what they say, have heard people listening to portable radios and watching portable tvs (without earphones), and seen others reading books and magazines (only the latter not adding to the noise level). When that behavior was annoying to others, usually a request to the restaurant was sufficient to get the behavior modified. I might also note that I have seen relatively few children at the high class restaurants at which I dine. But I acknowledge that behavior such as that cited by Rosemond does occur, although I might question how widespread it is, or if it is significantly more disruptive than that I have seen from adults in similar settings. Please remember this last point.

The article cites surveys from Public Agenda, in which in 2002 only 9% thought children were publicly respectful towards adults and in 2004 one in 3 teachers considered leaving the profession or knew colleagues who had left because of the behavior of children. My immediate reaction is that I have seen a significant number of adults who have no memories of what it is to be a child, who act disrespectfully towards children and then are shocked when the behavior is emulated and redirected at them. I also note a significant albeit relatively small minority of those I have seen entering teaching who really do not know how to work with young children or adolescents (depending on grade level) and who blame the children for their inability to maintain a positive learning environment - their sole management style is to threaten, scream, and complain. They make get conformity to their demands, but it will be sullen at best, and undercut as soon as they turn their backs. I don’t care how well they know their subjects or how well they score on teacher tests, these people do not belong in classrooms, and I really don’t care for their opinions about the behavior of children. But for now, I will grant that there are disruptive and rude children, and let’s move on.

After citing of all people Madonna, the article moves through the paragraph I first cited, where the question is whether the behavior is natural or shaped by society. The very next graf may provide a clue, and please note what I have placed in bold:

But what seems to have changed recently, according to childrearing experts, is parental behavior - particularly among the most status-conscious and ambitious - along with the kinds of behavior parents expect from their kids. The pressure to do well is up. The demand to do good is down, way down, particularly if it's the kind of do-gooding that doesn't show up on a college application.

The article goes on to cite how the expectations of children’s behavior has changed. That is,

parenting was largely about training children to take their proper place in their community, which, in large measure, meant learning to play by the rules and cooperate

Conduct was a window into one’s character, and there were certain fairly universal expectations.

Rude behavior, particularly toward adults, was something for which children had to be chastised, even punished.

parents might still

like their children to be polite, considerate and well behaved. But they're too tired, worn down by work and personally needy to take up the task of teaching them proper behavior at home.

Here a direct quote from the Harvard child psychologist who offered the last observation might be pertinent:

"We use kids like Prozac," he said. "People don't necessarily feel great about their spouse or their job but the kids are the bright spot in their day. They don't want to muck up that one moment by getting yelled at. They don't want to hurt. They don't want to feel bad. They want to get satisfaction from their kids. They're so precious to us - maybe more than to any generation previously. What gets thrown out the window is limits. It's a lot easier to pick their towel up off the floor than to get them away from the PlayStation to do it."

But the real issue is that parenting today focuses on training kids to be competitive - in the classroom and on the athletic fields,

and the kinds of attributes they need to be competitive are precisely those that help break down society's civility.

Warner continues with a number of observations from Kindlon, including that the emphasis of success values achievement over people, kids doing so much additional schoolwork that they don’t do chores, and other adults not getting involved:

"Nobody feels entitled to discipline other people's kids anymore," Dr. Kindlon said. "They don't feel they have the right if they see a kid doing something wrong to step in."

Here Warner again cites the data from Public Agenda in 2004, that

Nearly 8 in 10 teachers . . . said their students were quick to remind them that they had rights or that their parents could sue if they were too harshly disciplined. More than half said they ended up being soft on discipline "because they can't count on parents or schools to support them."

I have to interject at that this point that my own experience does not support this. I have never been undercut on discipline by my school administrators, even in the one case that went all the way to the superintendent. I have encountered what we call “red flag parents” but I have never allowed that to undercut the application of appropriate discipline. I do, however, have to keep scrupulous records, and I make sure to be proactive, both in communicating with parents and in informing administrators of possible difficult situations. But I acknowledge that I am in a far more fortunate situation than are many teachers around the country, and I make no pretense at generalizing from my own anecdotal experience.

The piece I am citing raises some real questions. I will just offer several of what I think are the most appropriate points:

"We always want to blame the kids, but if there's something wrong with their incivility, it's the way their parents model for them."

There's also the chance . . . that when children are rude, obnoxious and outrageously behaved, they're trying to tell parents something - something they've got to shout in order for them to hear.

”These kids are so extremely stressed from the academic load they're carrying “

"They have no kid space."

... parental over-involvement in their children's lives today often hides a very basic kind of indifference to their children's real need, simply to be kids.

Let me also offer the final two grafs:

If stress and strain, self-centeredness and competition are the pathogens underlying the rash of rudeness perceived to be endemic among children in America today, then the cure, some experts said, has to be systemic and not topical. Stop blaming the children, they said. Stop focusing on the surface level of behavior and start curing instead the social, educational and parental ills that feed it.

This may mean less "quality" time with children and more time getting them to do things they don't want to do, like sitting for meals, making polite conversation and - Madonna was right - picking their clothes up off the floor.

In the various threads on education, we always see people talking about behavior. Some commentors will complain about the kids, some will complain about the parents. There is, from my perspective, some validity to both sets of complaints.

I am not a parent (except of 5 rescued cats, one of whom is a real behavior problem, but we have no intention of giving him up, any more than most parents would give up a misbehaving child). Thus you may choose to discount the words I have to offer about parenting. I do think parents are a major part of the problem, but that is because I think the pressures they experience from today’s society contribute greatly to the kinds family structures and pressures that lead to what I consider aberrant behavior on the part of their children -- that is aberrant, because it is not ultimately productive for society. And here I focus most of all on the loss of kid time.


I am by choice a professional educator. I am also by choice one who has jumped into the fray of educational policy debate. I read extensively, I think about it a great deal, and I impose my viewpoints through postings in the blogosphere. And I am increasingly coming to the viewpoint that our focus on what is “wrong” with schools, teachers, etc., entirely misses the point.

I have often said that we need a serious debate about the purposes of schools and education. I till believe that is true.

But that debate can be meaningful only if it occurs within the framework of a larger debate, about the shape and nature of American society.

And perhaps this is why I et so upset at the rhetoric on why our schools are failing, because America is not “competitive” with other nations, or our test scores are lower, or our test scores are decreasing, or we don’t produce as many engineers as China or India (countries with many times our population, but never mind). It is the entire framing of the discussion in competitive terms.

Now don’t misunderstand. I coach soccer. I am very proud of the fact that in my years as a junior varsity coach I have never had a losing season. This year we were 8-1-1, outscoring our opponents 21-7. It is not the winning record per se that please me, but the improvement in skill and teamwork that my guys develop over the several months we were together. I started with a group of small, relatively inexperienced players, and we defeated several teams larger, faster, and individually more skilled than we were, because we learned how to work together. And I think at least part of the reason we were able to do that is because I gave them the opportunity to organize part of how we practiced, chances to do free scrimmages (where i said nothing).

I remember growing up how much of what I learned about sports and about teamwork came from informal games, not from the organized leagues.

I also remember how much of my passion for certain kinds of learning came because I was allowed to explore on my own.

And I see very little opportunity for most of the children I now teach to have similar experiences, and that scares me on their behalf.

I accept that we see a great deal of rude and/or inappropriate behavior among our young people. I do not think it is any worse than the behavior they see modeled by adults, and I do not mean just their parents. I remember Conservatives screaming about how Clinton’s behavior with respect to Monica Lewinsky set a horrible role model for our children. I was teaching 9th graders then, and their overwhelming reaction was that the response of most adults was hypocritical, hat none of them particularly modeled their behavior, sexually or otherwise, on what any politician did. They did, however, often raise concerns about the lack of comity they saw displayed in political exchanges, how people were willing to do anything for the sake of a political victory. Our children were watching, but as often happens, the lessons they learned may not have those in the official curriculum.

If we place so much emphasis on achievement and ranking and success and do not also include emphasis on things like sportsmanship, civility, common courtesy, then we should not be surprised at the behavior we encounter in our young people. And I do not think we should blame them.

And if it is ourselves and our society that bares the greater responsibility, why then are the only correctives we take punitive to our children? What will be the lessons they learn from that?

For myself, even as I am a demanding teacher, the most important thing I can give my students is that we must live in a world in which respect and courtesy matter. I have no rules posted in my class, none of this “break this rule and here’s the consequence.” I do have three questions, applicable to all including me, that we need to ask. The first, and most important, is to ask if my words and actions demonstrate respect for myself and towards others.

I would argue that if we expect our children to act respectfully towards each other and towards adults, then we adults - both those of us who regularly interact with the young people and those in leadership positions in society - need to tart modeling such behavior by acting with respect towards them, and towards each other.

The behavior of our children could use improvement. But that will not occur in an environment where our political and civil discourse is anything but civil, full of invective, denigration, and attack. it that is what we value, that and “success” over anything else, then it is foolish to waste any time wondering why we encounter the behavior of young people about which we complain.

By the way, it has been my experience that those adults who treat students with respect, who take the time to explain the reasons for the actions they make, who are willing to acknowledge to students when they (the adults) are wrong and apologize for their own shortcoming, these adults have far fewer behavior problems among their students. And unless and until the shape of our schools is changed so that it demonstrates a greater degree of respect towards our students, we are likely to continue to have concerns about the behavior there, or that our children demonstrate in society as a whole.

Are children savages? They are clearly not little adults, except in one way. They are absolutely accurate mirrors on our society, their behavior being a right-on reflection of those values we adults choose to hold most dear, as we inevitably demonstrate in our own words and actions. So if our children’s behavior is unacceptable, the answer is not to blame them, or to seek punitive corrective action aimed at them. The real answer is to look at ourselves, at the increasing coarseness of much of our society, and to attempt rectification at that level. If we continue with a “do as I say not as a I do” approach we are ot only kidding ourselves about how effective that can be, we do our children - and hence the future of this nation -- a grave disservice.



Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
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I hope the diary title at least intrigued you enough to come this far. Much of national education policy has been driven by the idea of making our schools more businesslike. This is in fact not a new phenomenon, as Larry Cuban notes in a book I am reading, which is entitled The Blackboard and the Bottom Line: Why Schools Can’t Be Businesses. Since I am not finished with the book, I won’t use this posting to give a long analysis, although I will point out that Cuban is one of the most respected historians of education we have ever produced.

Today I offer a story well-known in educational circle from the beginning of his book. It expresses a key point often misunderstood by educational policy makers and those - especially but not exclusively from the business world -- who think our schools should be run more like businesses. I will offer the entire story, and then a relatively few other snips from the book. That will be the bulk of the posting.

Offered by Jamie Vollmer, a former CEO, the story is known simply as “The Blueberry Story”

The teacher gives the businessman a lesson.
 
"If I ran my business the way you people operate your schools, I wouldn't be in business very long!"

I stood before an auditorium filled with outraged teachers who were becoming angrier by the minute. My speech had entirely consumed their precious 90 minutes of inservice. Their initial icy glares had turned to restless agitation. You could cut the hostility with a knife.

I represented a group of business people dedicated to improving public schools. I was an executive at an ice cream company that became famous in the middle 1980s when People Magazine chose our blueberry as the "Best Ice Cream in America."

I was convinced of two things. First, public schools needed to change; they were archaic selecting and sorting mechanisms designed for the industrial age and out of step with the needs of our emerging "knowledge society". Second, educators were a major part of the problem: they resisted change, hunkered down in their feathered nests, protected by tenure and shielded by a bureaucratic monopoly. They needed to look to business. We knew how to produce quality. Zero defects! TQM! Continuous improvement!

In retrospect, the speech was perfectly balanced - equal parts ignorance and arrogance. As soon as I finished, a woman's hand shot up. She appeared polite, pleasant. She was, in fact, a razor-edged, veteran, high school English teacher who had been waiting to unload.

She began quietly. "We are told, sir, that you manage a company that makes good ice cream."

I smugly replied, "Best ice cream in America, Ma'am."

"How nice," she said. "Is it rich and smooth?"

"Sixteen percent butterfat," I crowed.

"Premium ingredients?" she inquired.

"Super-premium! Nothing but Triple A." I was on a roll. I never saw the next line coming.

"Mr. Vollmer," she said, leaning forward with a wicked eyebrow raised to the sky, "when you are standing on your receiving dock and you see an inferior shipment of blueberries arrive, what do you do?"

In the silence of that room, I could hear the trap snap. I knew I was dead meat, but I wasn't going to lie.

"I send them back."

"That's right!" she barked, "and we can never send back our blueberries. We take them big, small, rich, poor, gifted, exceptional, abused, frightened, confident, homeless, rude, and brilliant. We take them with ADHD, junior rheumatoid arthritis, and English as their second language. We take them all! Every one! And that, Mr. Vollmer, is why it's not a business. It's school!"

In an explosion, all 290 teachers, principals, bus drivers, aides, custodians and secretaries jumped to their feet and yelled, "Yeah! Blueberries! Blueberries!"

And so began my long transformation.

Since then, I have visited hundreds of schools. I have learned that a school is not a business. Schools are unable to control the quality of their raw material, they are dependent upon the vagaries of politics for a reliable revenue stream, and they are constantly mauled by a howling horde of disparate, competing customer groups that would send the best CEO screaming into the night.

None of this negates the need for change. We must change what, when, and how we teach to give all children maximum opportunity to thrive in a post-industrial society. But educators cannot do this alone; these changes can occur only with the understanding, trust, permission and active support of the surrounding community. I know this because the most important thing I have learned is that schools reflect the attitudes, beliefs and health of the communities they serve, and, therefore, to improve public education means more than changing our schools, it means changing America.

(the story above is Copyright 2002, by Jamie Robert Vollmer and is online at his website, on which one find the quote

”Public education’s most precious resource is public trust. We must regain that trust, and in so doing, gain community permission to change our schools.”

. Vollmer is dedicated to improving schools, but he no longer takes the arrogant position of most business leaders. As you can see by going to his website, he starts by urging teachers and other educators to promote their successes.)

Cuban points out that business leaders have been involved in several generations of educational reform, even when the periods of reform have sought seemingly contrary goals (earlier reforms included insistence on tracking, on development of vocational education, for example, not exactly the high level college preparation insisted on by many today). Be he also, immediately after sharing the Blueberry Story, offers an important caution, one which I as a teacher strongly endorse:

Policymakers and others who set out to overhaul schools encounter a fundamental paradox: teachers and principals who block changes sought by reformers are supposedly the problem, yet these very same educators -- almost three million strong -- are the people who connect with more than fifty million children daily and do the essential work of schooling, Inescapably, therefore, they also have to be the solution.

(p. 5).

Far too much of the rhetoric surrounding the arguments about educational policy seems premised on the idea that those of us working in the schools do not have the best interests of children at heart. It often has a tinge to it that leads one to believe its advocates think that by using punitive measures and relying on rhetoric that denigrates those already committed to our children that somehow magically the schools can become a place that solves all the national problems of the day. This pattern of considering that more and better public education is the solution to all such problems is not knew. As Cuban notes

Generations of reformers have delegated public schools to solve such problems as racial segregation, poverty, lack of patriotism, and even alcohol and tobacco abuse; they have pushed changes in schooling that, they believed, would prepare students to handle these social issues better than their parents did. . . . reformers also looked to schools to solve the problem of lagging global economic competitiveness in the 1890s and the 1970s. This pattern of expecting education to solve the national problems is deeply embedded in the nation’s social and economic structures.

(p. 11)

I acknowledge that I am a pest when it comes to the issue of education. In many ways I am a contrarian, as I have discovered during my forays into educational policy here in the blogosphere. Today I will not explore what I think should be done. That would take far too long for one posting.

But I ask people to remember this: we have a shortage of qualified teachers currently in our classrooms, we want to improve our public education, and if we are going to attempt to do so, we must acknowledge that reality. We must also recognize, as the first Cuban quote I offered makes evident, that we cannot successfully change our schools without the cooperation of the millions of us already dedicated to the future of our children. That suggests that the voices of educators needs to have more predominant places in our public dialog, and that our role should not merely to be the punching bags for politicians and others looking to score points. We have a responsibility to work cooperatively, but it is unrealistic to expect enthusiasm from those who receive the bulk of the criticism and yet have little opportunity to offer our experience.

And when you listen to our voices, your attitude may well change. Vollmer went from being a typical business critic of public schools, wanting them to be more like businesses, to one of the most passionate advocates of schools and teachers. All because of blueberries.

What do you think?


Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
Email accepted at "kber at earthlink dot net"
Preface email messages with "teacherken" so I know they are not spam.

s the title of a new piece by the irreplaceable Mollie Ivins, the entirety of which you can read here. As you neighborhood educational blogger pest, I thought I would devote a diary to exploring what she offers. As usual, I will offer some selected quotes, and probably far too much of my own commentary.

WARNINGS BEFORE YOU START: (1) I consider Ivins essential reading, and am surprised that her work is not feature by other bloggers far more often than it is. After al, anyone who survived attending San Jacinto Junior High with the President needs to be given every benefit of the doubt. (2) I have o students until next Monday, as we broke yesterday afternoon. That makes me depressed (as I always am when I am not teaching - see this story at MyLeftWing that addresses it. (3) As always, I insist that we not take our eyes off the issue of education, not only because it is important in itself and because I am a teacher, but because it represents the very future of our democracy. Finally, (4) it will not end as you might expect.

Continue reading at your own risk.


After calling things such as nominations to the Supreme Court and indictments at the White House “mundane” and declaring her desire to focus less on what is wrong and more on possible fixes, Ivins offers the following:

Here's a starter: I would like America to be a country where we spend more money on educating people than we do on the military.

Now, for someone like me that is guaranteed to grab my attention, even if I think it is highly unlikely we could ever come close to reversing the current ratio. If memory serves, not including the supplementals for Iraq, the Federal expenditures on Defense are in excess of 400 billion, while those for education (not including food stamps, which come from the Agriculture budget) are less than 400 million. Since that represents between 7 and 8 % of the total expenditure on K-12 PUBLIC education, that means the total expenditure for public education is less than 6 billion per annum.


Ivins notes that the occasion for her writing this particular column was hearing Ray Suarez on PBS suggest that we make education our top national priority:

He suggests that this would have so many unexpected side effects -- ranging from science to race relations -- that it would effectively be a revolution.

She then attempts to calculate the cost of our military, and uses a figure, including Iraq, substantially higher than the one I did,one in excess of 50-00 billion, describing it as 52% of the discretionary budget, and offers (which I will not repeat - go read the article) an explanation of what she means by discretionary.

Her next brief paragraph also got my attention:

The group Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, whose purpose is to educate the public on how the federal government spends our money and what priorities are, suggests cutting 15 percent from the military budget and redirecting it.

I had two immediate reactions. First, these business leaders clearly are not from companies in what Eisenhower described as the millitary-industrial complex: there will be no execs from Halliburton or General Dynamics to be sure. Second, using her figure of 500 billion, that would represent a poll of 75 billion per year, which is more than the Federal government currently spends on all social related programs that are not entitlements like Social Security and Medicare.

I immediately decided I needed to take a look at this group, whose webpage is here. My first reaction is that they probably would not carry much weight in the broader business community or in the MSM as important business leaders: the first names I encountered were Ben Cohen and Stansfield Turner. But when I looked further I thought Maybe, just maybe, they cold represent the start of a process, since their description of key people included

Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities was formed in 1998 because top American businesspeople believe that the federal government's spending priorities are undermining our national security. Advised by retired admirals and generals, Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities' 650 members include the present or former CEOs of Bell Industries, Black Entertainment Television, Goldman Sachs, Men's Warehouse, and Phillips Van Heusen - as well as Ted Turner and Paul Newman.

and their military advisory committee was listed as having

decades of experience analyzing defense requirements.  They have concluded that this shift can take place while still maintaining the world's strongest military, sufficient to meet America's vital interests. The MAC includes: Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan (USN, ret) former commander of the North Atlantic Fleet; former Assistant Secretary of Defense Lawrence Korb (under President Reagan); Admiral Stansfield Turner (USM, ret.) who served as CIA Director, and others.

I decided this was worth a further look. So let’s return to Ivins. She is going to rely heavily upon their research, especially that of Larry Kolb. But her own words as usual carry great impact.

After noting that we are so strong that even with some cuts it is impossible to believe that anyone could conceivably represent a military threat to this country, she offers some specific examples. Let’s give a snippet of the text:

Anyone who has watched the poor National Guard getting called back to Iraq again and again can figure out that quite a bit of this money is not being well spent.

Just for starters, is there anyone -- anyone -- who thinks we need more than 1,000 nuclear warheads in order to have a credible nuclear deterrent at this time? By cutting back to 1,000, we can save $13 billion right there.

Another $26 billion would be saved by scaling back or stopping the research, development and construction of weapons that are useless in dealing with modern threats. Many of these, such as the F/A-22 fighter jet and the Virginia-class submarine, were designed to fight the defunct Soviet Union. All of this is according to Lawrence Korb, whose credentials are endless -- senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, senior adviser to the Center for Defense Information, former vice president of Raytheon, etc.

The $26 billion does not include the old Star Wars program, now called missile defense, which could be cut back to basic research for a savings of $7 billion.

Ivins uses a figure of only 60 billion for sake of discussion (which would be 12% of the total she previously cited). She says Korb says that much could be cut without damaging military readiness. She argues that any think tank - right or left - cut come up with similar amounts with very little effort.

Let me offer the conclusion of her article before I embark on my own reflections.

OK, so we could shift $60 billion into education without even breathing hard. How would we continue toward a goal of putting more into education than into stuff to kill people? For starters, we could try having fewer enemies in the world. Then we wouldn't need so many ways to kill them, eh? And how do we get there?

Nothing simple about this effort -- anyone who thinks international relations and diplomacy are simple, straightforward subjects has not been paying attention. This how-do-we-fix-it series is a conversation, not a lecture, and all suggestions are welcome. You can send suggestions to me at ideasformolly@creators.com.

It is interesting that Ivins is encouraging readers to offer her suggestions. This would provide yet another opportunity to expand our conversations about education. Regular readers know that I have participated in such a discussion with Tom Vilsack, Governor of Iowa, both at his blog and at dailykos. There is a similar opportunity to offer suggestions offered by SEIU (one that covers all of the progressive agenda) at their site Since Sliced Bread, to which Vilsack provides a link. And at which you could win big bucks -- so far as I post 11,724 ideas have been posted in an attempt to win $100,000.

It is now time for the thoughts of teacherken. You man, if you wish, stop reading now and either go on to something else, or offer your comments only with respect to what Ivins wrote. I hope you will continue reading for another few minutes, because I think my words may be of some value.

In most of the discussions about education and what can be done to improve it we have been far too limited in our discussions because of cost. Remember that most education is funded by property taxes and some degree of state aid. That has a tendency to favor wealthier jurisdictions, and in general we have seen more effective schools in places like wealthier suburbs. I will not here recapitulate all the arguments about how money is spent or whether spending more does or dos not make a difference (although far too often the only way that is measured is by test scores). The issue of funding is always a limitation of what can be done about our schools. This has, for example, been an ongoing issue in Texas, where the State Supreme Court just ordered replacement of the state’s unconstitutional funding scheme before the start of the next school year, although it still did not require the lege (as ivins calls it) to come up with the tax increases necessary to truly fund education -- you can read about this here in the Dallas Morning News. Those who have followed the issue of school funding nationally may remember that one of the battles Howard Dean fought was to equalize school funding in Vermont -- it was that which first focused my attention on him.

When Bush first proposed NCLB, I participated in a study where several grad students in a course at George Washington interviewed key educational leaders around the country about the proposal. One point we heard repetitively is that one of the most significant things the Federal government could do to improve public education is fully fund its promised share (40%) of the costs imposed by the legislation on Special Education. This would remove major burdens from local districts and free up those funds for other purposes. The Federal government has never even met HALF of its promised share, even as the mandates have stayed in place, mandates that - unlike those of testing - are considered binding even if the state or district receives no other Federal funds, because these are considered issues of civil rights. I do not immediately know what the cost of doing this is, but I do know where the burden lifted would have the greatest effect, and that is in inner city districts with high percentages of students identified as special education, precisely those districts about which we have the greatest concern, and at whose test scores critics of public education most often point.

I also immediately think of all the wonderful programs funding for which this administration has wanted to eliminate. Back on July 19th I wrote bout how the Feds wanted to slash funding for gifted education.

Since people became aware of Lakoff, we have seen many discussion on the subject of framing. In a sense, this piece by Ivins falls in that category - how do we frame the issue of education. But actually it is something far more fundamental. And it represents a challenge to me.

I often argue that before we can truly address educational issues in this country, we need to have a serious discussion about educational philosophy -- unless we can agree on the purpose of school, we cannot seriously decide on priorities and structure. I still think that’s true.

But Ivins made me realize that there is a question that first must be addressed. It is so basic, and yet we so often ignore it in our political discourse.

What kind of nation and society do we want? Attempting to address ANY issue without first addressing this is in a sense worrying about a dripping faucet in the 9th Ward of New Orleans while ignoring the failure of the levees on the Industrial anal (so it is not a great comparison, sorry).

I believe that a serious discussion of the kind of nation we should be inevitably favors the liberal / progressive point of view. But that is not why I would like to see such a discussion.

Those in business and non-profit institutions know the importance of a mission statement. It is what should guide all of our decisions. It should be how we assign priorities.

We have a mission statement, actually several, as a political entity. These are the Declaration and the Preamble. We may argue about how they should be interpreted (which is why who sits on the Supreme Court is so critical, and why it is valid to seriously question how a person nominated as a Justice might interpret and rule).

We cannot make meaningful decisions about how we allocate resources unless we can see them in a far greater context than that which we usually apply.

I would love to see far less devoted to defense and weapons systems, and far more to the development of our national and our culture. My mind explodes at the possibilities of what could be done with just a fraction of the 60 billion about which Ivins and Korb talk - spend 10% of that on education, including post-secondary education, and the possibilities blow my mind -- interest-free loans for post-secondary education, or basic wireless computers for every student, or fully (not just the 40% share) funding of mandated special education needs (with a requirement that freed up funds be spent on classroom needs) .. I could go on and on.

But now i realize that as important as education is as an issue in my political decision making process, I now want something more. I want a serious discussion, NOW, about what kind of nation we will be. I want to hear a sweeping vision of where we as a nation and a society can go. And I want the discussion to include our relationships with the rest of the world.

Education will be a key component of that discussion. Thus I do not worry that my key issue will be lost in the broader discussion, anymore than I think my wife’s key issue of the environment would be ignored.

We cannot survive as a society and a democratic republic if we continue to address things only on a piecemeal basis. Madison may heave felt (in Federalist 10) that the multiplicity of faction would serve to prevent any one faction from becoming too powerful and thus hostile to the interest of the nation at large. Whether the current influence of certain groups disproves his thesis is arguable. What is not arguable is that we are a nation and a society at grave risk. We need to address education, we need to fund it more completely and more equitably. But unless we address the larger issue of the kind of society we wish to be, we could win the battle on education and still lose the larger - and more important - war.

I have written enough for one diary. I will continue to focus on education when I blog. But i now realize that I must place my arguments and pleadings in a far broader context. And now, besides looking for political leaders who understand education, I desperately seek those willing to lead this nation in the broader discussion so necessary to our future.

What do you think?


Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
Email accepted at "kber at earthlink dot net"
Preface email messages with "teacherken" so I know they are not spam.

I was the last one out of the locker room for the JV soccer game against Swarthmore, our arch-rival, because I was getting my ankles taped. As I was about to leave, I heard our (legendary) varsity coach Jimmy Mills talking about the president getting shot in Dallas. When I got out to the field,I started to tell the other guys about it, but since I was known as something of a joker at first my teammates refused to belief me. But the guys from Swarthmore came over and said they heard it on the bus. We only knew he had been shot, there were rumors the Johnson had been shot. Our coaches huddled and since they knew no more, decided to start the game.

This diary is my looking back. It will include my memories, burned into my mind at age 17, of a day crucial in the lives of those that experienced it and equally crucial to our nation. It will include some reflection and analysis. It will be uniquely mine.

The game was scoreless at halftime. Haverford’s coach, Jack Lester, told us at halftime the president was dead. Swarthmore’s coach stayed focused on the game. We went into shock. Swarthmore had the kickoff, and scored in the first 13 seconds. It was to be the game’s only score. I missed one goal I absolutely should have had. As the game wound down I stood alone at midfield as Swarthmore was taking corner kick, desperately hoping that our goalie Dave Kane could snag the ball and get it out to me for one more attempt on goal. I had heard the cheering of our star center back Oye Oyelaren during the game - he had encouraged me by name, and I wanted to live up to that. As the game ended I was angry and upset as I walked off the field.

The crowd tried to console us, but it was strange. Charlotte Austin, my girl friend, was trying to cheer me up, but she held a radio to her ear and was clearly in a state of shock . Others also had radios, and then I remembered - the president was dead.

The main athletic competition scheduled for Saturday the 23rd was almost canceled, then postponed to the following Wednesday after people would already have left for the Holiday. I would remember that later we could not understand why the NFL had been so insensitive and played its games on Sunday the 24th. But for some reason they decided the students needed to be encouraged, and we still had the dance that Saturday. It was weird -- people came because we wanted to be together, but not too many people went out on the dance floor - we were all too somber.

over the weekend I heard the Philadelphia broadcast of the Boston Symphony that Friday. It was a day concert. The conductor, Erich Leinsdorf, had lived in our town (Larchmont NY) while conducting at the Metropolitan Opera and I had known two of his boys, Greg a year ahead of me and Josh my classmate. During the concert they announced the shooting of the president, and then that the orchestra would play the funeral march from Beethoven's Third (Eroica) symphony. You could hear everyone in Symphony Hall Boston stand. To this day, hearing that movement invokes memories of 1963.

Like many, I was watching tv when Jack Ruby shot Oswald. That was a further shock. And like all on campus except those who went to Washington as did my roommate Doug Neal, I watch the various events of the mourning -- the body lying in state, the memorial service with Barber’s Adagio for Strings being played (another piece irrevocably tied in my mind to the events of that weekend), the funeral, the famous dignitaries in the procession to the cemetery. And most of all, the black horse with the reversed boots and John-John’s salute.

I am a teacher. Today, as I do each time this event falls on a school day, will revisit that day with my students. Many of those I now teach are children whose parents were not yet born. They have little sense of the impact it had on our generation and our nation. Yes, it was but one of many deaths by violence of public figures, including Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr., and Bobby Kennedy (whose 80th birthday would have been on Sunday and whose words at Indianapolis upon hearing of the death of King probably kept that city from rioting as did so many across the nation in April of 1968). One did not have to be a fan of Kennedy to have been shocked in 1963, in fact, even many who disliked Kennedy were nevertheless shocked and dismayed, something that many who did not live through it find it hard to grasp.

As a teacher I tell my students there are very few exact dates in American history one needs to know. Clearly July 4, 1776 is key. One might argue for the July 1-3 1863 of Gettysburg, and/or the 11th hour 11th day of the 11th month in 1918. The next absolutely critical day was Dec 7 1941. And then the day we remember today. And then 9/11/2001.

I tell my students that in some ways November 22, 1963 was more shocking to the nation than was 9-11, perhaps because we were far more innocent. Yes we had 3 previous presidents who had been assassinated (Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley), but it had been more than half a century, and the attempts on Teddy Roosevelt when he was campaigning in 1912, on FDR when he was President-elect and on Truman in Blair House did not have the same impact, not only because they were not successful, but because we did not have the impact of widespread television coverage. Sept. 11 was shocking, even for those of us who lived through Kennedy’s assassination, but Pearl Harbor had shown us we were not invulnerable to foreign attack, American targets had been successfully attacked overseas, and we had had terrorism at home, including the bombing of the Capital well before either the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center or McVeigh’s attack in Oklahoma City.

The death of Kennedy in a sense represent a lost of innocence. It may have been a false sense of innocence, but it served as a rude awakening to many. The series of deaths that followed through 1968 served to move many from shock to disillusionment to cynicism. I cannot predict with any accuracy how Vietnam might have been different had Kennedy lived. I can wonder if, absent the violence against leaders who inspired, the anti-war reaction would have been as bitter and divisive as it became.

I will be 60 before this anniversary again comes upon us. I look back now on more than 2/3 of my life. There are few events that hit me as hard, perhaps because I was 17 at the time -- old enough to realize the impact of what had happened, and young enough that it was that event that caused me to become really focused on public discourse and its consequences.


November 22, 1963. 42 years ago. I cannot forget. And as I reflect, I hope that I am able to use my memories of that time to help move my country forward, to a time and place where violence - physical or verbal - is not seen as an acceptable way of settling our disputes. I hope that my service as a teacher can help my students learn how to disagree without being disagreeable.

But most of all, I hope that we never again have to go through such a shock. No matter how much I may dislike our current political leadership, I wish no violence upon them. No matter how wrong I think our actions towards other nations may be, I wish for no more 9-11’s. And I hope that I can model how to remember, to grieve for a time now lost where we were full of the optimism of what this nation could be, and inspire others to strive once again for such a time.


Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
Email accepted at "kber at earthlink dot net"
Preface email messages with "teacherken" so I know they are not spam.

That is the thrust of an op ed in today’s Boston Globe by James Carroll. Entitled The fall of Bob Woodward it is as much about our naiveté and gullibility as it is about the famous “reporter” (something I think he ceased being at least several books ago). And while I will offer snippets with my commentary below, I strong recommend reading the entire piece, as well as the editorial Stonewalling Guantanamo in which the editors argue that the decision to deny Geneva Convention rights ta Gitmo

laid the groundwork for all the abuse of detainees, including the 31 deaths that the military has found were confirmed or suspected homicides. Now the administration has compounded the shame by denying access to prisoners by investigators from the UN Human Rights Commission. The decision will only strengthen the view of US critics that this country has placed itself above international law.

.

And now to Carroll.


Carroll begins with a rather blunt question:

AT WHAT point does naiveté become something to be ashamed of?

And if that first sentence is not enough, the rest of the opening paragraph should absolutely slap you across the face:

The revelation last week that Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward abetted the Bush administration's program of lies and character assassination left you feeling as if you, too, have been a coconspirator in the sleaze. Not that you were under any illusion about the turn Woodward's career took when he became a justifying megaphone for ''Washington insiders." Nor is it a surprise to find the dean of investigative journalism acting like every other self-protecting member of the establishment, since journalism itself has become a pillar of the governing power structure. But Woodward represented something more than all of this, and his quite American fall from grace (''The bigger they come") presents a challenge to your conscience.

Carroll goes on to describe Watergate as the most familiar word in the political lexicon. He describes the horrors of the Nixon administration we so associate with that word, but adds a second meaning for the term

But Watergate also became code for the most dramatic reiteration of national redemption, when diligent truth-seekers brought to light the methods and purposes of Nixon's band. The myth of American goodness depends on the conviction that, when the truth is finally apparent, the nation will act upon it. Watergate was the morality tale that made it so, and Bob Woodward, with his partner Carl Bernstein, was the moral hero. It is not too much to say that Woodward rescued your ability to believe in your country again.

He then devotes a paragraph to the expectations we should have of the press. The last sentence of that paragraph is worth noting as a summation of why he has written the paragraph, and also of why he has written this op ed:

The news media do for democracy what liturgy does for religion; what poetry does for experience; what gesture does for feeling. With words out of silence, the press tells you who you are.

He describes the Plame affair as parallel to Watergate, this about war in Iraq as much as that was about war in Vietnam. He goes on to describe the press as paralyzed by fear since 9-11, with the fear exacerbated when the press itself became a(n anthrax) target.

Carroll describes the news media as unable to write critically about those protecting them, with the result being that

the news media, with rare exceptions, simply embraced and passed along Bush's purposes and justifications, not matter how palpably dishonest. Judith Miller was the public captain of this enterprise, but Woodward was her secret co-captain. This time, he was his own Deep Throat.

Carroll is not the first to make that “Deep Throat” reference, to be sure. The context in which he places it was to me quite interesting. That the press failed to do its job, and that Woodward did little real reporting in his work (primarily the book) on the buildup to the war is now beyond doubt. The reference can be read as sarcastic, or as representing disappointment about how far he has fallen. That to me is not clear.

I am going to push the limits of fair use by quoting in their entirety the final two paragraphs, and then offering a few comments of my own.

Your naiveté consisted in the belief that, after Vietnam, your nation would never again embark on a criminal and unnecessary war. After a popular movement, inspired by tribunes of the free press, stopped the Vietnam War, you believed that the government would be responsive to the will of the people, forgetting that the people can surrender that will.

The finger-pointing in Washington now -- who voted for what, when and why -- is truly pointless. The merest glance back at the prewar debates shows that the justifications for war were all made of tissue. If the press treated them as substantial, that is because the nation itself, which still includes you, needed the tissue to cover its shame. The tissue of lies is yours.

In the first of these two final paragraphs, Carroll makes an argument that I wish were true, but to my mind have not been true since the election of Reagan. We saw then the beginning of a concerted effort by many on the Right to overcome what they called the Vietnam Syndrome. By then we saw things in popular culture like the rise of Chuck Norris and lines like Stallone’s to Richard Crenna asking if this time the military would be allowed to win. We saw and heard people in the Bush 41 administration bragging after the first Gulf War that they had finally overcome the Vietnam syndrome. Remember the big parade here in DC after Desert Storm. Where I live in Arlington was at the end of the flyover of all the aircraft used in the conflict - it was loud, and very nation-glorifying. Perhaps here at least Carroll would have been better off saying that many of us who had opposed the Vietnam adventure hoped that we would not have to go through such things again, but such felling was to my mind was clearly not universally held.

The final paragraph is, however, right on. Far too many were willing to accept the jingoism of our press, its unwillingness to raise hard questions. To be fair, many who will read this in the places I will post it did raise questions. If nothing else, those of us who supported Howard Dean questioned the direction by that alone. But the Dean phenomenon did not take off until after the decision to go to war had already been made, and to a large degree only after the actual fighting had begun.

There are many reasons which can be posited for this administration’s rush to war. One clearly is to deny the inspectors opportunity to disprove any claims about WMD - I think that is now evident. Another was the real fear that major fighting might last into the Iraqi summer, which can be brutal on both personnel and equipment. But clearly one motivation was to deny any opportunity for the development of a political significant opposition in the country. That opposition could only come about with the help of a press willing to serve its function to question authority and to serve as eyes and ears of the nation. Instead we got far too many in the media willing to serve as the mouthpiece of this administration, which would plant things with friendly people like Judy Miller (and apparently Bob Woodward) and then quote what they had written as proof that the nation agreed with them.

This brings me to the real reason why I am posting this piece. Many here have been very active at digging far more than did the press originally. Many also have consistently taken the so-called MSM to task for the poor performance in the buildup to the war, and during its unfortunate continuation. If we wish to save what is left of our democratic republic, we must intensify our efforts. While it is somewhat gratifying to see that the critical mass in the press is now willing to be somewhat critical, there are still far too many willing to continue with such false verbiage as repeating the administration’s claims that the Congress had the same intelligence as did the administration. The Goebbels ( and I am sorry Godwin, the Nazi reference is deliberate) of repetition to implant a big lie in the consciousness of the nation is still ongoing, as are the obvious character assassinations of anyone who would dare question.

We must challenge press and politicians not to again give this criminal administration the benefit of the doubt. It has forfeited that right unless and until it admits its patent dishonesty in the buildup to the war, and its incompetence in prosecuting the war and its aftermath (that is, if we are in aftermath and not still in the war).

If we who understand do not continue with all of our intellect and strength to oppose, then truly we will become responsible. We have the power, as Howard Dean used to tell us, to make a difference in this ongoing struggle. We can force press and politicians to act responsibly. If we do not use that power, then Carroll will be right, and “the tissue of lies” that has been destroying our democratic republic will be ours.




Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
Email accepted at "kber at earthlink dot net"
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have nothing to offer this Saturday about education on the broad scale. It is not that there are no stories and reports about which I could write, because I could always find something about which it would be worth notifying readers. The political news is so overwhelming and will be so much of the focus that any posting on other subjects is likely to quickly disappear. Thus I choose instead to take a more personal focus. To discover what that means, I apologize, but you will have to continue reading, even if that means scrolling down.

As long-time readers know, I have been participating in the process known as National Board for Professional Teacher Standards certification. I previously diaried about it here back on March 31st, shortly after I had completed the process of submitting my portfolio.

Yesterday was the day the scores of applicants for the 2004-2005 cycle were posted online. We had been informed late last week that Friday would be our judgment day. Shortly before 9 AM I was finally able to get my scores.

To my surprise - and my great relief -- I had passed on my first go-around. I did not exceed the cut score by a particularly large margin, but it did not matter - a pass, is a pass is a pass.

Of far greater importance, at least two other teachers in my building also passed (about one we do not know because she was out of town and might not have had access to the internet where she was). Since only about 1/3 of applicants pass on the first attempt to complete this grueling process, we were all excited, and as word began to spread around the building we also began to get congratulations from our colleagues. When I first found out I was in my homeroom, 30 students (mainly 10th by also some juniors and seniors) in an Advanced Placement US Government class. I told them, and they immediately began applauding. Among the students in my other classes was the son of a science teacher who did not pass until his second try, and the son of one of the members of this cohort, who like me was relieved and excited to know that the process was complete.

For us this was a high stakes procedure. No, failure to meet the necessary level would not have cost us our jobs. And we could still have resubmitted those parts of the portfolio adjudged not to be of sufficient quality, but even that is no guarantee: yesterday I was contacted by someone from this site whose wife had resubmitted the part that had been scored at a 1.0 level (out of a 4.0 rubric) only to have the resubmission graded at a 1.25 level. She ws devastated and he wondered (not even knowing when he contacted me that I had passed) if I could be of any help to her.

So it is not of high stakes in the normal sense, but it can be devastating not to succeed, because all one gets is the scores on each part, with NO EXPLANATION of why that part was so graded. I know that as a teacher I really have to give my students feedback on work , not merely give them a score. We go over tests, land I write explanatory comments and suggestions on work. Sometimes if there is a pattern of incorrect responses, it serves as feedback to me what I need to re-teach, because a common misunderstanding is far more likely to be my responsibility in not being clear enough in its teaching.

We know that our portfolios are graded only by other teachers. Each part is graded by several teachers, and if there is significant disagreement on how to score that part it is further examined. This is a normal process in scoring via rubric - whether on AP examinations, state examinations or things like portfolios.

I have said that this is not high stakes in the conventional sense. The results, however, do have serious consequences, even beyond the emotional impact - who wants to be told that they don’t measure up when you have put your heart and soul into your submission? And even those of us who pass can still feel hurt - as I examined the scores I received on the individual parts of my submission, I really do not understand several, scored somewhat lower than I would have expected even in my conservative estimate of how my work would be scored. I was lucky that the one part that is not judged by how it actually relates to teaching -- the assessment center exercise, which tested my content knowledge - I got almost perfect scores, and that provided me with a margin sufficient to make up for what I believe were low scores elsewhere. I knew I had aced those essays, but that is the only part actually scored as I expected. One part of the other material was actually scored higher than I believe it should have been according to the guidelines I was supposed to follow.

The other real consequence is not one that affects all who complete the process. For the first year I will receive an additional stipend of $5,000, and for the nine following years $4,000. Since I am on an elevated pay scale because I have a Masters + 60 credits (and completion of my abandoned doctorate would only have increased that rate of pay by about $600), this is most the significant increase in pay I am likely to see in what is left of my teaching career. And given that I turn 60 in may, I am likely to have that additional remuneration for the est of my career, unless the state and county both go broke (which they could, given the executive and legislative leadership at both levels -- but that is a tale for a different time).

My wife took me out to celebrate late last night. It was late because at the end of my second period one of my students asked if I were coming to see the play. I made sure to go (it was The Miracle Worker and he was playing the son, quite well as it happens). I usually try to see my students in their endeavors outside my classroom. When I am specifically asked as happened yesterday, it becomes my top priority, even over my own celebration. Somehow that part of my approach to teaching, which I believe is a key ot my success, is something that cannot be accounted for in any evaluation of teaching. It is not part of my annual review, and while the administrators covering the events see me, it does not become a part of any official report. I am not “observed” on that as I am in my classroom. And there was no way to include it in my submissions for national board certification.

So what does all this mean, besides the additional pay? Well, most states will accept this certification in lieu of their own, so I could easily move to a district in Virginia or some other state, except that I have no desire to leave my school. It will garner those of us who succeeded recognition in school publications (the newsletter to the parents, on the school website, etc.) and recognition at a Board of Education Meeting, either in December or in January. It is an accomplishment we can put on our CVs and about which we can if we choose brag in our handouts to our next groups of students.

I am glad that I went through it. Knowing how I would have felt had I not made it (and I did not succeed by a particularly large margin) makes me all that more firmly opposed to the way we impose high stakes single shot tests upon our students. The frustration I feel about the lack of feedback or explanation for the scores exactly mirrors that of students who belatedly receive cores on tests imposed from the outside but rarely receive any specific guidance and certainly not in a manner or a fashion timely enough to provide any information from which they can benefit. It is far too often for them merely that they passed or they didn’t. I do not understand how that kind of approach is either pedagogically sound or even humane.

Enough. I am happy for myself. I am proud of how my school did. And I have imposed enough on those of you who have read this far.

Have a nice weekend.
Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
Email accepted at "kber at earthlink dot net"
Preface email messages with "teacherken" so I know they are not spam.

Stateline.org is a useful site for those who want to track public policy and related news state by state. It is also the source of the article, written by one of their staff writers, on how arts are struggling to maintain a place in the public school curriculum. Entitled Arts vying for a place in school day , I think it contributes an important piece to the picture of what is happening to education in this country. As you will see, either by reading the article, or the annotated selections I offer below, this is not a partisan issue.

The article focuses on the effort of Republican Mike Huckaby, Governor of Arkansas, describing him and other arts advocates as

on the offensive to try to keep the fine arts from getting squeezed out as the federal No Child Left Behind Act ratchets up pressure on schools to raise reading and math test scores.

.


Huckaby is the current chairman of the Education Commission of the States, which is not only an interstate compact on education, but also the primary sponsor of the National Teacher of the Year Award (a fact not mentioned in the article). He is clearly committed to the arts, as Arkansas

is emphasizing the arts as a regular part of schools’ curricula with a new law requiring 40 minutes of music and 40 minutes of visual art per week for every elementary school student.

This is not the pattern in all states: because of the increasing emphasis (due to NCLB) on math and language arts, which must be tested under NCLB

there’s a growing trend to relegate dance, music, theater and visual arts classes to lunch periods, after school or on weekends, said Nancy Carr, a visual and performing arts consultant for the California Department of Education.

California, which used to have the nation’s finest public education system before voter initiatives gutted the funding,over a 5-year period appropriated the massive sum of $1 / student per year for 5 years, until the funding was penciled out in 2003-2004. Further, funding from the California Arts Council which issued grants that enabled schools to bring painters and Shakespeare troups into classrooms has been cut from $36 million to only $4 million.
 
Huckaby understands that this is wrong:

 
“Some states are still making the huge mistake of eliminating arts programs, thinking that they’re doing the kids a favor academically, when in fact, they are hurting their children,” Huckaby, a guitarist since his teen years, told Stateline.org.

 
There is research showing that having arts “raises standardized test scores and ingrains students with essential creative and problem-solving skills necessary for tomorrow’s workplace. “ I would note that I personally object to defending arts on the basis of test score results - it is an example of accepting a false framing that distorts the real issue. It is, however, the path that - unfortunately to my mind - many arts advocates are taking in order to defend arts education. Thus we read in the article
 

“People want education to lead not only to a whole person but a person who can compete in the global, high-tech and creative economy. … This becomes something you would ignore at your peril,” said Dr. Jonathan Katz, executive director of the National Association of State Arts Agencies, the collective voice of all 50 state arts agencies, which partner with state departments of education to set arts achievement and assessment standards.

That arts are particularly helpful for at-risk groups, who both score at lower rates and drop out at higher rates, is another argument that is offered. The examples cited in the article, including Dallas ArtsPartners,  are justified at least in part that those who participate score higher on standardized tests than do those in a control group.
 
Dallas ArtsPartners, a partnership between the city’s school district, government and cultural organizations, reported students with a heavy arts involvement – especially special education pupils and English language learners — scored higher on Texas standardized tests than a control group.

I will offer the hyperlinks from the article for the three examples cited in case anyone would like to explore a bit more:

Dallas ArtsPartners

YouthReach Initiative

Arts Education Partnership
 
This last group released a study a few days ago which found

high levels of student development and teacher job satisfaction in 10 schools with high concentrations of low-income students but vibrant arts programs.

 
Despite all the evidence of the positive influence of arts programs, schools and systems are far more likely to hire a new math teacher than an arts teacher, because the fear of the punitive actions that can be taken if math (or reading) scores do not improve. This happens despite the recognition in NCLB of the arts as important:

In fact, NCLB recognizes the arts as a “core academic subject” and will require teachers of the arts – the same as reading, math and science – to be highly qualified in their subject matters. The arts aren’t tested like reading, math and, soon, science, yielding results on which funding, bonuses and penalties hinge.

Of course, there are many other ways of measuring success besides paper and pencil testing, but NCLB does not allow for them, and since the penalties and bonuses often depend on test scores, commitment of resources tends to be shaped by those financial carrots and sticks.

Let me offer the snippet of the worst cases in arts education as noted in the article:

In Illinois, one of seven states without an arts education mandate, only 63 percent of schools offer visual arts, according to an October study by the Illinois Arts Alliance. The report found Illinois lags behind the national average in every arts discipline.
 
The other six -- Alaska, Colorado, Massachusetts, Michigan, South Carolina and South Dakota -- do not mandate arts education statewide, according to Arts Education Partnership data. However, local school districts can still elect to have an arts requirement in place.

The rest of this diary is my commentary, which I will attempt to keep relatively brief.

For those who do not know my work, I am a high school social studies teacher. But my undergraduate major was music. While I cannot draw or paint to save my life, I have a background that includes visual and plastic arts, literature, architecture and dance (my wife Leaves on the Current was trained as a ballet dancer and has done dance evaluation and dance criticism). In my own teaching I try to include - even in government - material that invokes the interest of those students with artistic and musical orientations as well as those whose orientations are those favored in the traditional classroom: verbal-linguistic and logical-mathematical (the language is that of Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences -- don’t get hung up on his theories). I have found it an effective approach of reaching a far broader range of students.

But to me there are far more important reasons for the inclusion of a vibrant arts (and music) curriculum in our public schools. First, I do not understand how we can consider our children to be educated if they do not learn about the arts. Here I think of the words of John Adams that are inscribed on the wall of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in our nation’s Capital:

I study war and politics, so my children can study business and commerce, so their children can study literature and the arts.

I note that far too often our education is limited to only the first two clauses, and when it is we are impoverished as a nation and as individuals. I would note that my high school classmate Tom Horne, who is now Superintendent of Public Instruction in Arizona and with whom I strongly disagree on the emphasis he places on tests, nevertheless included an emphasis on the arts (albeit largely because of how they improve test scores) in his first state of education speech on January 6, 2004. He quotes the words of Adams as one of his favorite quotes. (side note -- Tom grew up fascinated by politics but also as one who seriously played the piano, and his wife is/was a harpist).

Further, one cannot understand much of history without understanding culture, of which arts are an essential part. Here I note that one essential part of Western Civ when I studied it in the 1960’s was things like architecture, painting and sculpture.

Finally, not all of our students are going to be engineers and scientists, entrepreneurs and businessmen. Some will be lawyers and doctors, to be sure. But some will also be artists, or those working in the arts fields, and many will be interested (and hopefully knowledgeable) consumers / patrons of the arts.

I have recently posted about the importance of extracurricular activities, including sports. I believe in using all possible avenues to reach our young people, to give them the widest possible range of possibility of development. And as I believe that physical education should be an essential part of our schooling, and not restricted to extracurricular activities, I feel equally as strongly that our children should have the opportunity for organized learning - within the school day - to learn about the arts. Thus I view this posting as a logical followup to my last effort.

I hope this is of some use to someone.



Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
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Often when people talk about international comparisons of schools, they will note that the phenomenon of high school sports and other activities -- like non-academic music and theater and clubs - are almost unknown in other countries. Some will make such remarks because they would like to see such “frivolities” eliminated as a waste of time. Others will attempt to justify them with analyses that will point out how music can contribute to better math scores, or the value of teamwork one develops in many sports.

This diary will do neither. It is the reflection of one person, who played both sports and music and participated in theater as a high school students, and who coaches, serves as musical director of music theater and advises a number of student activities. As my own athletic season has now ended, I find this an appropriate subject upon which to reflect this chilly Sunday morning.


I majored in music in college, and I teach social studies. In high school I participated in choir and orchestra which met during the day), theater and musical theater (which did not), and our forum club (discussion group which met in the evenings). I coach soccer ) boys’ jv, assisting with the varsity, although I have also coached girls jv), and as noted serve as musical director of musical theater (a new responsibility as of this month). I have also advised a variety of other after school activities - I am co-sponsor of the freshman class, have advised the Muslim students and coached the Mock Trial team. Mock Trial and soccer offered stipends for my service that was quite minimal, the other positions were without compensation. I do them because I enjoy them, to be sure, but also because I see them as an important part of the lives of my students.

This is playoff season for fall sports. Yesterday our girls cross-country team won their second consecutive state 4-A title, our boys finished sixth (with one boy finishing as state runner-up). Our boys soccer was eliminated on Tuesday in the regional final and yesterday our girls lost in the state semifinals, both on penalty kick shootouts ( a heartbreaking way to lose, but all except the state championship game must have a final outcome). So this week and last night those of us who coach have had to hug our kids when they lost, tell them how proud we are of what they did accomplish.

As it happens I also teach many of the kids I coach. When I mainly taught freshmen it was not unusual for me to have a quarter of my jv team in my classes. This year I am teaching 10th graders. Three of my AP Government students were also among the best of my jv players (they were a bit too small for varsity as 10th graders) and I also had several girls jv players, one girls varsity starter, and two varsity boys players, plus a host of cross country runners. I am a very demanding teacher, and my athletes know that I am a teacher before I am a coach, but I am also aware of the commitment that playing high school sports represents, so I am also not without understanding - when one has played - and lost - a night game on Tuesday, I cannot expect that the academic demands of my class at 8:25 the next morning is going to be the most important thing in one’s life. The emotional let-down (or equivalent exuberance after a win) is really no different than the student would encounter if the night before the parents had informed her they were divorcing, or one’s older brother called to announce he is getting married. The academics in school are only one part of the life of the healthy adolescent.

It is on that I wish to focus. School occupies a major portion of the lives of our children, particularly when they are of high school age. But it is not the sole focus in their lives, nor should it be. As important as the academics may be, it should also be a time of exploration of who they are, and what matters to them.

The school at which I teach has a fantastic music program with its 5 choirs, multiple bands and orchestral ensembles. We do a variety of kinds of theater. Some of these are defined as classes, itself a use of time for a ‘soft” subject that many would decry, while others are student organized and meet only after school.

Sometimes people complain that our students are not learning. As a teacher of adolescents, and one who clearly remembers his own adolescence, that statement is ridiculous. In education we often talk about the hidden curriculum - in far too many of hour schools and classes our stated curricula of math, science, language arts and social studies is not that which we really present to - and impose upon - our children. It is often far too much of surrendering to authority, learning to be passive, being told what is important by adults who may never set foot in the classroom (legislators and school board members). It is learning how to sit for 45 minutes in an comfortable desk set in geometric rows, absorbing information to be regurgitated back in formulaic methods, with so much crammed into that 45 minutes each day that there is little time to explore the ideas that are actually relevant to one’s life, and that have the potential of intellectual and emotional excitement. There is little opportunity to develop those aspects of one’s person that might really matter.

For those who say our children are not learning, or that they can’t seem to memorize things, they are nuts. Our kids demonstrate fantastic memories when they learn all the lyrics to dozens of popular songs each year. A football player may have to know a hundred plays, and not only where he is supposed to be but the roles of most of the other 11 players. An actor in a play will have to know not only his lines, but also those that serve as queues to his.

Students quickly learn the limits of behavior by observing which teachers pay attention to what actions, or even pay attention to them. They make the proper economic decision as to the use of their time by evaluating the rewards and punishments. They may still be grasshoppers ( and this is much as reference to Kung Fu with David Carradine as it is to Aesop) and not have the long term vision of the tortoise. Part of my job as teacher and coach is to remind them that they will have lives beyond this week, or this athletic season.

Most of the kids who play soccer for me will not play intercollegiate sports. heck, about 1/2 of my freshman JV players are lucky to even make varsity by their junior years (I will carry a few as sophomores who will never make varsity to give them one more chance to participate, and their willingness to submerge their own egos for the good of the team serves as a positive model for some of my freshmen). Then again, very few of our singers or actors will do that much more with either activity in college, at least not in the official college organizations. But many will use their love of the activity to participate in other ways - as audience members, in student organized groups or in intramural sports.

Competitive sports can be destructive. I must coach against some teams for whom my opposite number can be someone with whom I would not entrust my own child had I one, because that person is abusive. But that is not unique to sports - I have as a student had abusive teachers in the classroom, teachers whose attitudes towards their students was how much they could demean or belittle them.

I wrote near the top that this would be a personal reflection. I am by nature very undisciplined. I always did better in school when I was active outside the classroom. If I wanted to run cross country or play soccer, I was going to have less time to do my school work, so that when I returned after practice I would have to quickly get to work - and be focused - or I could not get through my work. I see a similar pattern among most of my athletes. Here I will note that my boys jv for first quarter had only 2 players with a GPA below a 3.0, the median was 3.38 and mean was the 3.47. But then, they must bring me a weekly progress report, and if they are projecting less than a 3.0 or if they show a single grade below a C they don’t practice, they sit on the sideline and do homework, and they will not start the next game, no matter how talented at soccer they may be. Because they want to play, they are motivated to stay current with the school work. And if they come and say they need to miss the first part of practice to get academic help, there is no penalty as far as playing time - academics come first.

I often get to know students far better as a coach or activity advisor than I do as a teacher. Part of it is a question of time: I have 45 minutes in my class, but soccer practice on days without games is at least 2 and often 2.5 hours. I also get to know the family context - parents come to the end of practice, or to games, or to performances. I am far more often to hear about family problems from a kid I coach or advise than I will from I student I only teach. The role of coach or faculty advisor provides a students with another adult to whom s/he can turn during the confusion of adolescence.

I am proud of our varsity boys. We lost in a penalty kick shootout. But we played that game without a player who tore tree of the 4 ligaments in one knee -- he is first string all-state and all-South, and may even be all-American: he had been scoring 2 goals a game, and had multiple division one offers (one is still there despite the injury). He postponed his surgery so he could be on the sideline with his teammates. Another player had a badly sprained ankle and could not go. We lost two other starters for unfortunate reasons: one academically another because he got in a fight and was suspended. Others stepped up and played fantastically. One played almost the entire game despite the fact that he had not been able to practice because of a strained groin. Another kept coming out and going back in because one leg was so badly hurt he could not walk evenly or kick with it, but he could still run and tackle. Another went as far as he could with a sore throat that made breathing hard, then told us when he had no more to give. The other team was bigger than we were, and very physical, and the referees barely kept control of the game.

We lost, but that we even got to the shootout was amazing - our kids left everything they had on the field. Two earned all-county praise from the other coaches in attendance from their performance in that game. It was a loss, and I remember one of our captains crying at the end not because we lost, but because it was the last game of his soccer career - he knows he won’t play in college (although he may play baseball), and he was sad to see it come to an end. This is a kid I made captain of JV as a freshman because he is a natural leader, even if not the most gifted soccer player. I have watched him grow over 4 years. As a freshman he had a middling 2.5 average. Now he takes some AP courses and maintains a 3.5 - not spectacular, but showing improvement as he has learned to focus.

My wife often asks me why I take on the burdens I do outside the classroom. It helps me to get to know kids in a different context. It enables me to build relationships that spill over to other kids. I have one young man for the 2nd year in a row in my classes whose older brother I coached (and also taught), and I can reach him in a way that I might not otherwise be able to do. And I probably get far more out of it than I put into it - it is such a delight to help young people explore their own lives and potential.

If you have read this far, thank you for being so indulgent. I would ask that you reflect upon your own participation in activities in school outside the classroom - sports, debate, art, music, theater, whatever it was - and the role that it played in your life. Then perhaps like me you will be able to see that those who seek to eliminate (whether for financial or academic reasons) such activities do not fully understand the damage they would do to many of our young people were they successful such eliminations.

And have a nice Sunday.

Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
Email accepted at "kber at earthlink dot net"
Preface email messages with "teacherken" so I know they are not spam.

Greetings, readers. My offering today is derived from three different items that came into my inbox in the past several hours (since 8 PM Wednesday evening) that are educationally related. In order, they will be a release on a book on what international comparisons written by one of my former teachers, a press release on military recruiting, and the first issue of a new electronic (which means you can read it for free) journal on constructivism.

While I realize that none of these may seem like burning issues, except possibly the one on military recruitment in schools, I view them as interconnected, and not just because they all came to me. I will attempt in the remarks I make about each piece to explain how all are related to the issue of the future of this nation, and the political battles to that end in which we are all engaged.

---

The first offering is a bulletin from the National Priorities Project. It will provide you with links for a number of good sites with information about military recruitment around the nation. I will not comment much about this, except to note one set of key points in the bulletin. The bolding represents emphasis in the original.

* The three largest schools or programs in the  country from which recruits were drawn included the GED Test  Center in the New York State Education  Department, the Gary Job  Corps Center in San Marcos, Texas and another GED-based program in New  York.  
* Montana -- a state with low median household income and high poverty rates  -- led the country in state recruitment rates.  Rhode Island was at the  bottom.  
* High income neighborhoods are under-represented.  Low and  middle-income neighborhoods are over-represented.

I remember that one reason Jessica Lynch entered the Army is because it was the only way she could obtain a future away from the dismal opportunities in Palestine WV. For this administration to continue its military adventures, it is absolutely dependent upon those who do not have economic opportunity, and quite often that will mean those who have insufficient education to have any alternatives to education. I caution readers that increasing the importance of tests for high school graduation, which the administration would like to include as part of NCLB, would only exacerbate this problem.

Here is the entire bulletin:

National Priorities Project (NPP) Bulletin
************************************************************************************
In the long tradition of National Priorities Project turning data into action, NPP releases today a major expansion of the NPP Database.  With the addition of military recruitment data, we're once again highlighting the cost of war and militarism on local communities.  

As of today, from anywhere in the country, you can find out the number of military recruits in 2004 that came from your high school, zip code, county or your state, along with breakdowns by race, ethnicity, gender and income levels.  Get your local numbers at: www.nationalpriorities.org/database .

To get a snapshot overview and analysis of the military recruitment data, which includes tables and charts, go to www.nationalpriorities.org/militaryrecruitment .

Working with Peacework Magazine (www.afsc.org/peacework ), which submitted the Freedom of Information Act request for military enlistment data, NPP's analyses reveal the disproportionate impact of military recruitment on low and middle-income communities.

The data also show:

* The highest recruitment rates -- defined as the number of recruits per  thousand of the 18-24 year-old population -- were found in counties that were  relatively poorer than the rest of the nation.  All of the top 20  counties had median household incomes below the national level, and 19 of the  20 had median household incomes below their respective state level.  
* The three largest schools or programs in the  country from which recruits were drawn included the GED Test  Center in the New York State Education  Department, the Gary Job  Corps Center in San Marcos, Texas and another GED-based program in New  York.  
* Montana -- a state with low median household income and high poverty rates  -- led the country in state recruitment rates.  Rhode Island was at the  bottom.  
* High income neighborhoods are under-represented.  Low and  middle-income neighborhoods are over-represented.

As the Iraq War continues and the number of soldiers killed and wounded mounts, this data makes clear that low- and middle-income kids are paying the highest price.  It's young people with limited opportunities that are putting their lives on the line.

Parents, students and concerned activists by the thousands have voiced their concerns in recent months about military recruitment tactics.  Now, the NPP Database will be used to help people focus their efforts on the states, counties, zip codes, and schools mostly heavily impacted by military recruitment.  Please contact the National Youth and Militarism Program of American Friends Service Committee, at  youthmil@afsc.org or call 215-241-7176 to connect with activists in your region.

 We welcome your feedback and suggestions as to how the NPP Database in general and the military recruitment data in particular can best serve your needs.  We hope this resource will provide you with tools to better understand and respond to federal government practices that can be a matter of life and death in your communities.

Pamela Schwartz
Outreach Director
********************************************************************************************************
If you received this email from a colleague and would like to join our email list, please email us at pschwartz@nationalpriorities.org  to subscribe.

The second offering is a description of a new book by Iris Rotberg of George Washington University. I begin with a two part disclosure. First, Iris was one of my teachers during my doctoral work at Catholic U - I did both of my courses in educational policy under her supervision. Second, in the course on Federal educational policy, the outcome was that I was (along with Suzanne Ritter) co-author of a monograph with Iris on the Bush educational proposal. Iris is an expert on international comparisons, and the new book that is described in the release below from the Business Wire (which I received on the Assessment Reform Network listserv) is quite pertinent given how often the issue of “competitiveness” is used as a justification for what we are doing to our schools through the insistence on the increased use of tests and of standardized curricula. Those who have read my other postings on education will realize that I am, both as a high school teacher and as a commentator on educational policy, highly critical of both. I offer the information in case you wish to pursue more fully the subject of international comparison.

NEW U.S. STUDENT TEST SCORES DRIVE COMPARISONS WITH OTHER COUNTRIES
Business Wire -- November 2, 2005

Washington -- The Department of Education's recently released test
scores measuring how U.S. students are performing since enacting No Child Left Behind raise new questions on how our students compare to those in other countries--and the quality of their school systems versus our own. In some studies, the U.S. ranks below the international average, in some equal to it, and in others above it.

"Most people are unaware that countries often cited for their high
rankings on international comparisons do not use tests to hold schools accountable as with the administration's education law, and many do not even administer standardized tests until secondary school," said Iris Rotberg, research professor of education policy at The George Washington University in Washington and editor of Balancing Change and Tradition in Global Education Reform.

Rotberg said the international test-score rankings are virtually
impossible to interpret. "It's not surprising, given the major sampling problems and the difficulty of ensuring that comparable samples of students, schools and regions are tested across countries," she said. "The results tell us little about the quality of education in the participating countries."

In Balancing Change and Tradition in Global Education Reform, Rotberg brings together examples of current education reforms in 16 countries. The book goes beyond myths and stereotypes and describes the difficult trade-offs countries make as they attempt to implement reforms in the context of societal and global change. In some countries, reforms are a response to major political or economic shifts; in others, they are motivated by large upsurges in immigration and increased student diversity. Irrespective of the reasons for education reform, Rotberg notes that all countries face decisions about resource allocation,
equality of educational opportunity across diverse populations, access to higher education, student testing and tracking, teacher
accountability, school choice and innovation.

Rotberg's book describes attempts to strengthen education both for the children who have not been well served (or not served at all) and for the children who have had an opportunity to attend good schools but whose educational experiences still might not be keeping pace with societal change. The profiled countries include Australia, Canada, Chile, China, England, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Turkey and the U.S. For a complete description: http://www.rowmaneducation.com

The final part of today’s offering is a new electronic journal about Constructivism, entitled Constructivist Foundations. For anyone who would like to explore some definitions about what constructivism is and its importance in educational theory and cognitive psychology, one can go here for a series of pieces. Let me quote from the first piece in that link, while noting that I am NOT including the imbedded links within the portion I am quoting:

The constructivistic approach to teaching and learning is based on a combination of a subset of research within cognitive psychology and a subset of research within social psychology, just as behavior modification techniques are based on operant conditioning theory within behavioral psychology . The basic premise is that an individual learner must actively "build" knowledge and skills (e.g., Bruner , 1990) and that information exists within these built constructs rather than in the external environment. [See Ullman (1980) versus Gibson (1979) for an overview of this controversy within the cognitive perspective.] However, all advocates of constructivism agree that it is the individual's processing of stimuli from the environment and the resulting cognitive structures, that produce adaptive behavior, rather than the stimuli themselves ( Harnard , 1982). John Dewey (1933/1998) is often cited as the philosophical founder of this approach; Ausubel (1968), Bruner (1990), and Piaget (1972) are considered the chief theorists among the cognitive constructionists, while Vygotsky (1978) is the major theorist among the social constructionists .Activity theory and situated learning are two examples of modern work based on the work of Vygotsky and some of his followers.

.

The key points to note from what may seem like gobbledygook is that (a) it is derived from the work of Lev Vygotsky, an educational theorist from the old USSR (which leads some on the eudcational and political rights to dismiss his work automatically) and (b) repeat from the above it is the individual's processing of stimuli from the environment and the resulting cognitive structures, that produce adaptive behavior, rather than the stimuli themselves. This is key, for it means a very different approach to education. Rather than a model of prying back the scalp and pouring predetermined knowledge in, one challenges the learner at a point just behind his or her current level in order to expand both skills and understanding. Such an approach to education is much more focused on the individual learner rather than on the imposition of external standards. As such, it is not as easily measured by so-called objective tests, and implies a very different approach to teaching and schooling, one which many on the right who believe that it is their way or the highway find very frightening.

The web page for the journal includes the following:

DESCRIPTION

Constructivist Foundations (CF) is an independent academic peer-reviewed e-journal without commercial interests. Its aim is to promote scientific foundations and applications of constructivist sciences, to weed out pseudoscientific claims and to base constructivist sciences on sound scientific foundations, which do not equal the scientific method with objectivist claims. The journal is concerned with the interdisciplinary study of all forms of constructivist sciences, especially radical constructivism, cybersemiotics, enactive cognitive science, epistemic structuring of experience, second order cybernetics, the theory of autopoietic systems, etc. . .

AIM AND SCOPE

The basic motivation of the journal is to make peer-reviewed constructivist papers available to the academic audience free of charge. The “constructive” character of the journal refers to the fact that the journal publishes actual work in constructivist sciences rather than work that argues for the importance or need for constructivism. The journal is open to (provocative) new ideas that fall within the scope of constructivist approaches and encourages critical academic submissions to help sharpen the position of constructivist sciences.

The common denominator of constructivist approaches can be summarized as follows.

* Constructivist approaches question the Cartesian separation between objective world and subjective experience;
* Consequently, they demand the inclusion of the observer in scientific explanations;
* Representationalism is rejected; knowledge is a system-related cognitive process rather than a mapping of an objective world onto subjective cognitive structures;
* According to constructivist approaches, it is futile to claim that knowledge approaches reality; reality is brought forth by the subject rather than passively received;
* Constructivist approaches entertain an agnostic relationship with reality, which is considered beyond our cognitive horizon; any reference to it should be refrained from;
* Therefore, the focus of research moves from the world that consists of matter to the world that consists of what matters;
* Constructivist approaches focus on self-referential and organizationally closed systems; such systems strive for control over their inputs rather than their outputs;
* With regard to scientific explanations, constructivist approaches favor a process-oriented approach rather than a substance-based perspective, e.g. living systems are defined by processes whereby they constitute and maintain their own organization;
* Constructivist approaches emphasize the “individual as personal scientist” approach; sociality is defined as accommodating within the framework of social interaction;
* Finally, constructivist approaches ask for an open and less dogmatic approach to science in order to generate the flexibility that is needed to cope with today’s scientific frontier.

I have only had a short time to glance at the articles in the first issue, and I acknowledge that they will seem a bit abstruse to many on this blog, but for those with a serious interest in education, it is worth noting the international nature of the contributors to this first issue of the journal.


Well, that’s the offering for the day. Do with it what you will.

Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
Email accepted at "kber at earthlink dot net"
Preface email messages with "teacherken" so I know they are not spam.

Here I go again. Here’s another annotated list of all my education diaries to date at dailykos. If you are interested in the topic this provides you a way, if you want or need it, to see what I have posted about education. Of greater importance, take the time to read the comments, especially in the more active threads. There is great insight offered in response to what I post in an attempt to increase our discussion on this critical issue.


HERE'S THE LIST.

What makes a GOOD High School? Posted on Sunday Oct 23, 2005, this diary reached #2 on the recommended list, although it only stayed on the list for a few hours. It inspired a fairly spirited discussion with 62 comments. It provides a link for an article on the topic that appeared in the Washington Post in April of 2005 and which focused on the school at which I teach. That led to an invitation to present at the recent Maryland State Teachers Association annual meeting. I posted this the day after I had led the presentation, and included some general analysis as well as the final page of our handouts. Some commentors felt that the school at which I teach cannot serve as an example because some of our students are admitted by competitive examination, and/or because of some of our socioeconomics and/or our relationship with the University of Maryland. I make no claims that we are ideal, but that there things from our experience from which others can learn.


Challenging Bad Educational Policy was a not very successful attempt to make people aware of a useful educational website. This disappeared with only 3 comments.

A Reading Bill of Rights for Young Adolescents offers something I encountered in my browsing, from a website in Indiana, and which I posted on Oct 9. 2005.

A response to Tom Vilsack was posted on October 8, 2005. It represents a continuation of the dialog begun with my participation in the blogger phone call. This was on the recommended list for quite some time.


Do you know a good school? was an effort to let people know about the National School of Character Award and how to apply. It was posted on Oct 5, 2005.


High stakes testing - what is it, and does it work? This entry on Sept 25, 2005, provides the reader with some understanding of the terminology they often see in general news pieces and offers some analysis by yours truly. I am not, as one might guess, a big fan.


A teacher’s life - four weeks Posted Sept. 24, 2005, a continuation of the series begun back on August 14. This covered the beginning of classes and related subjects.


A conversation on education A Sept 21, 2005 posting. This was my summary and analysis of a phone call with Tom Vilsack in which I participated as an invited education blogger. I cross-posted at a variety of places, including at Vilsack’s HeartlandPac website. The response to this eventually led to Vilsack posting a response both there and here at dailykos.

In education as in FEMA? The pattern continues Posted Sept 18, 2005, this is based on an article in the Seattle Times which describes how the pattern of unqualified people at the top of an agency occurred not only in FEMA, but in the US Dept of ED under Rod Paige.


Hiding things that disprove their ideology was posted Sept 17, 2005, and describes how the US Dept of Educ was suppressing research that ran counter to their professed opinions, this time on bilingual education


Falling students, rising profits was posted Sept. 12, 2005. I decided to post this because Jimmy Kilpatrick of educationnews.org, who is quite conservative, considered this piece from The Nation

the single finest article ever published in a print publication that captures the ethical and moral corruption of what began in Texas as the so-called "Texas Educational Miracle."

Given how that “miracle’ was used to shape current national educational policy, I thought more people should be aware of what the article said.

Should teachers (and others) receive merit pay? A Sept 11, 2005 posting inspire by a piece in the Arizona Republic on this controversial issue


America’s educational apartheid is about a piece by Jonathan Kozol which appeared in the September New Yorker. Posted on September 10, 2005, it provides a link, a description and some analysis and background


This administration really blows it was posted on Sept 5 2005. It describes how the Bush administration was using Katrina as a stick to pound people with some of its ideological ideas about education.


Katrina and education - can you help? appeared September 2, 2005. It raised some issues about education arising from the devastation caused by the hurricane. It didn’t get much play, and at this point is quite dated.

A Teacher’s Life - The School Year Begins was posted on August 28th, was on the recommended list for quite a while, and has 72 comments.

What does the public think of public schools? presents the annual Phil Delta Kappan survey on the subject and includes analysis by Monty Neill of Fairtest.org. This appeared August 27th, and got a fair amount of play (it has 52 comments).

A Teacher’s Life - the school year approaches was the first of a series of diaries I did n the the beginning of my school year. This appeared on August 14, the day before I officially reported, even though I had been back at work for a week.

THESE WERE LISTED THE LAST TIME I DID THIS, IN JULY:

what was your favorite subject in school reached #2 on the recommended list on Saturday July 30.  The primary focus is an article from the St. Petersburg (FL) Times (one of the great papers in the nation) about how electives are being eliminated or cut back in order to provide more time to prepare for mandatory tests in reading.  I offer a fair amount of commentary of my own.  The thread is mixed, with a lot of poster limiting themselves to the question in the title, but many choosing to explore the implications for them had they not had access to electives, and still more talking about the various policy implications caused by the testing requirements of NCLB and the need to ensure that all students can read.  There are 152 comments, many extended and thoughtful.

NCLB problems not solutions was a diary on July 26 that flew by with little comment or notice.  As I wrote at the time

First I will discuss the problem of high qualified teachers, a requirement under the Law.  Next I will refer to a somewhat related column about teacher compensation that appeared on the front page of the metro section of the July 26 Washington Post.  Finally I will discuss the issue of supplementary services (tutoring), focusing in particular on an article in the July 25 Baltimore Sun.  Throughout I will offer my own analysis and commentary.  

Some thoughts on testing and education is a July 21 piece on three different items about the topics in the title of the diary, two from Seattle and one a column by Bob Herbert of the NY Times.  As usual, I provide some selections from each of the pieces (while I encourage you to read the entire piece) and provide some additional commentary of my own.

Slashing Fed Support 4 Gifted Education, posted July 19, works off a story in the Washington Post on the slashing of funding for  the Javits Center for Gifted Education.  It is an example of the shortsightedness of this administration's approach to the funding of education, and something of the hypocrisy of NCLB.

Rothstein (NOT Rove) on Educational Equity was posted July 15, It focuses on a conversation with Richard Rothstein, who was for a number of years the educational columnist for the NY Times.  The conversation appeared in The Evaluation Exchange, a publication of the Harvard Family Research Project.

The Campaign for Educational Equity is a diary about a new approach being taken by Teachers College in NYC, led by its president Arthur Levine.  The diary focuses on a piece first published in Teachers College Record back in May.  The diary was posted on July 14.  I happen to think it was deserving of more attention than the five comments it received.  Take a look, and decide for yourself.

A Political Issue - Teacher Pay was the first of my pieces ever to be front-paged (on July 3 by Armando).  It uses an article that appeared in the Long Beach (CA) Journal (and apparently elsewhere) as the starting point for a discussion of the educational implications of teacher pay and an exploration of the political issues involved.  The diary parked a fascinating discussion of 255 comments.

HOW NCLB ENRICHES BUSH CRONIES AND OTHERS has a self-explanatory title.  It is based on a report written by Gerald bracey and put out by the school of education at Arizona State University.  It gives specifics of individuals and companies that are benefiting rom NCLB while showing their contacts with the Bush family and the President. I provide a link to download (PDF) the entire report.



BILL MOYERS:  "A MORAL TRANSACTION" is about Public television.  This is related since public tv started as educational tv -- our local station in DC is WETA, founded as  (Greater) Washington Educational Television  Association.  Moyers paid himself for a two page spread in the Washington Post to present his defense of the purposes of public education.  He was involved with the founding of public broadcasting, and has been a powerful advocate for its independence.



SOMETHING GOOD & EXCITING IN PHILADELPHIA is about a new charter high school  opening this Fall and dedicated to peace studies and conflict resolution.  It includes the organizers request for mentors for each of the students.  I wanted people aware of what good things could be done under charter school legislation, and to let those people close enough to get involved about the opportunity to participate.



Three Things TO THINK ABOUT put together information from three emails I had received from different lists in which I participate.   The first two items were clearly about education.  The first was about an article entitled "A Teacher Falls In Love, Over and over" and the second was about the "opt out" provision for parents to prevent the military recruiters from having personal information about their children.



AN EDUCATION LEADER ON NCLB will connect you with an interesting piece entitled "Zen and the Art of Bill's Philosophy" from District Administration, a professional journal for superintendents and the like.  It focuses on a many who has been regional superintendent in Vermont for 23 years.



GEORGE LUCAS -EDUCATION NOT STAR WARS introduces readers to Edutopia and the work of the George Lucas Educational Foundation (for which Edutopia is the primary informational outlet).  It  includes an extract from the latest issue to whet your appetites.  If you don't know about GLEF, this is your chance to find out and sign up for free.



What's wrong with Education??? is the text of a post to the Assessment reform network by George Sheridan, who gave me permission to post it on dailykos.   George is a teacher in California, and a union rep, who is quite articulate about the problems teachers and schools really face.

HIGH STANDARDS from Virginia was posted May 4.  It is also the result of a post on the Assessment reform network, this from a woman who is a former Virginia teacher of the year, but is posting in her capacity as parent of a middle school student.  it is well worth the read, even if I say so.

If you truly care about education was my attempt to provide a brief annotated list of some online resources about education.  Anyone with a serious interest in education policy should know these sites.

Responsibility, posted May 11, is my reaction to a posting on an educational listserv about the issue of affixing blame and responsibility.  I explain within the piece, which was my response back on list, why it is relevant to issues of education and of testing.

Testing Insanity gets even worse? is largely the text and background of a press release on a really absurd situation that occurred in Washington State.  Perhaps one can respond with a sardonic laugh or comment, but it is illustrative of what we doing destructively to our schools and our students.

Education -- You won't believe  -- or will you ?? has selections from four articles on education, the first from Texas about Sandy Kress, a major influence on Bush and the creation of No Child Left Behind, the other three being from a variety of Virginia publications.   All four articles are worth the read, and the diary will give you a sense of each.  You may have seen this one, since it made the recommended list.NOTED link has been corrected

being a teacher - some end of year good and bad are my personal reflections as I approached the end of this school year.  You may or may not find it relevant, but it will give you a sense of how I operate, and what matters to me.

And now ... reflections & questions is another personal reflection.  I drafted it as I begin this my 60th year, and posted it in the early hours of May 23, my 59th birthday.   Since my vocation is as a teacher, personal reflections are inevitably connected with my life at school.  THis piece is very personal.

Need a Tutor?  Call India was also posted on May 23.  It is about a phenomenon of outsourcing in education.  The implications are scary, given that one part of NCLB is the transfer of federal education funds to provide tutoring for students in schools that fail to meet Annual Yearly Progress.  This one is not all that long, and it is an issue about which we should be watchful.

PEN Public Education Network provided some selections from the weekly email from the Public Education Network, which is an invaluable source for anyone interested in education, providing not only links for news articles, but also things like sources of funding for teachers and schools, etc.  Take a look, and if you have any interest, I point you at how you too can sign up for this weekly Newsblast.

Finally, Memorable teacher(s) - whom do you remember?.  This was inspired by a visit yesterday to my alma mater, Haverford College, for a glee club reunion, where we were conducted by the long time 928 years) choral director at the College, Bill Reese, now 95 years old.  I give my memories of four teachers, one high school and three at Haverford, who had a huge influence on me, and I encourage others to offer their memories in the comments.   Some of those, such as that by Plutonium Page, are by themselves worth the read.  This was on the recommended list for several hours, and has over 90 comments, most of which I promise are not by me.



If you care about education, posted on April 16, gives an explanation of the Public Education Network, with some samples from that week's electronic newsletter.   This is a good resources for those that want an easy way of following major issues in educational policy.



Some education resources, posted April 18, contains some selections without comment from the newsletter of the Coalition for Essential Schools, and organization based on the work of Ted Sizer.



warning about a new "report" on teachers  was posted on April 19.  This is the diary in this group most likely to have been read, as it was on the recommended list for about 24 hours.  It addressed a report issued by the Progressive Policy Institute with which I found a number of problems, but which since it was getting some publicity was important to discuss.  I will note that for this diary the discussion in the comments is worth taking the time to read perhaps in its entirety.  WARNING  -- there are over 300 comments, and the thread stayed active for several days.



commercializing all of education? explores the decision of the US Department of Education to defund the work of the Eisenhower  National Clearing House for Mathematics and Science Education.  It is based on an email bulletin from Eschool News online  -  another valuable resource on educational issues, and was posted on April 20th.  This is a diary you may well not have seen.



Teachers and the law was also posted on April 20, and similarly scrolled by without much action.  It contains information from the Reach Every Child website of Alan Haskvitz, and contains information that may prove useful to some on this list



Don't let my critics in explores a conflict at George Mason University.  Posted on April 27, it includes selections from the online column the day before by Jay Mathews, principal education writer for the Washington Post.  It shows how even in education people on the right (in this case Checker Finn) are unwilling to have meetings where those who oppose their views (in this case Jerry Bracey) are even allowed to attend.



What does it mean to be a teacher? A reflection on what life as a teacher is like, from my perspective as a high school social studies teacher.  Posted March 20. As I note in the intro,

The least of the problems is a response on the issue of cheating on tests required by the Federal "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) law.  It was an extended version of something I began as a comment on another thread, and includes a quotation from Walt Haney's magnificent analysis of how the so-called Texas Miracle in education was actually the result of cooking the books in other ways.  I believe this diary provides a good summary of some of the issues confronting public education, and I asked people what they were doing to help save public education.



Do you REALLY want to read THIS diary?, posted March 31, was my reflection on the process of National Board certification for teachers, written just after I had completed my last part, the Assessment Center Testing.  Like many of my diaries, it is very much of a personal reflection and analysis, but perhaps may give some insight into the process.



Saving Public Education - Saving Democracy largely consists of a statement posted with permission by five researchers in education, E. Wayne Ross, Kathleen Kesson, David Gabbard, Sandra Mathison, & Kevin D. Vinson.  I felt it was very much on point as to what is really at stake in some of the battles currently going on in the field of public education policy.



Education and "The Mighty Wurlitzer"  is the title I place on a piece by well known education writer Gerald Bracey, who gave me permission to post a piece he had written on how the right manipulates public discourse on education.



F for Assessment - today's education diary was posted on April 3.  It contains selections and analysis by me of an article by Jim Popham, noted expert and former president of AERA, on how our current program of assessment is badly flawed.



Cheapskate Conservatives Cheat Students, posted April 4, takes you through a few selections of an article by that title written by Richard Rothstein, who used to write the education column in the NY Times.



Teacher quality and NBPTS certification posted April 5, takes the reader through an article by Andy Rotherham originally published in Education Week .  As one who had been undergoing the NBPTS process, I thought it worthwhile to consider his points and offer a brief response of my own.



More than an exit exam? offers selections from a report strongly recommending the use of multiple measures to determine high school graduation, with as usual a few personal comments by me.  The piece itself comes from the School Reform network based at Stanford, and the best-known of the authors is Linda Darling-Hammond.



The loss of hope? , written on April 10 as I sat in a Starbucks with my wife, is only partially about education.  It is an explanation of why I keep teaching even as I can hold out little hope that anything I do will make any kind of difference on big picture issues. Perhaps as much as anything, it is a self-exploration shared with the community.



Fed Educ Law Causes Cheating? discusses a new report done by Nichols and Berliner on behalf of the Great Lakes Center.  Includes executive summary of report.



Bush Proposed Education Cuts relying  on an analysis originally prepared by National School Boards Association, the information passed on by Fairtest provides a detailed look at what Bush's budget would do to Federal support of education



Among School Children, Class Size Does Matter an op ed I wrote a number of years ago that appeared in a now-defunct chain of suburban DC papers, in their Montgomery and PG editions.  This piece was also picked up by a number of email services.  it represents my musings on how the issue of class size can be explained.



A Teacher's View - the Real Battleground This includes some musings on my own teaching, which serves as the basis for my concern that the kind of teaching I can do now is under real threat, and ultimately challenges readers  -- what will they do to support public education?  This diary stayed on the recommended list for the better part of 24 hours.



EDUCATION: If you oppose NCLB, read this is based on an item enclosed in a email I received from an educational listserv.  I had the author's permission to post the email, which describes a forum of progressive educators that "agenda of promoting a progressive, democratic vision of public education that supports the good work many schools are doing while pushing the public policy agenda in a direction counter to the current prevailing wisdom."   The organization is funded in part by Soros.  I encourage people to explore it.



So who knows what something means? starts with a tale about how the author of a piece used in a standardized test who discusses real problems with the questions used  and the answers accepted.  I then go into an extended set of remarks of my own about the problems with the kinds of testing we are now doing.



What is a good teacher? offers for your reading the text of a piece of that title by Alan Haskvitz, an award-winning teacher (his cv blew me away) .  I was glad to see that many of the traits he discusses others find in me.



IMPORTANT - 3 Articles on Education  describes 3 important commentary pieces, by Nel Noddings, Ronald S. Byrnes, and John Merrow, that appeared in a single issue of Education Week .  I provide extracts from each article, a wee bit of my own commentary and background on the authors, and encourage others to go read the pieces.



But is it SCIENTIFIC? discusses in detail a symposium on educational research,  that were available on line,  from Teachers College Record .  The symposium was framed around a set of questions, which I provided in a blockquote in the diary, and which I do so here:





.  This was actually my second diary on the same subject, because the first one, an important TCR for educational issues, scrolled by so quickly.  



on the finances of public school education was actually originally written as a comment way down on another diary.  I offer some details about systems I know here in Washington, and invited others to participate in a dialog, which ultimately got 23 comments.



How the Right will kill Public Education used a story in the Charlotte Observer about the possibility of granting tuition tax credits for attendance at public schools.   This diary provoked a lengthy discussion, with 233 comments.



Thoughts on a teacher's week was cross-posted from my own blog because I wanted some feedback, and I don't get many comments on my own blog.  It uses some of the events from a week in my classroom to talk about teaching, but also about more.



so how many kossacks are teachers? included a poll, and got a number of us to offer some information about our own roles in the world of education



I hope this diary has been of use to at least some readers.


Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
Email accepted at "kber at earthlink dot net"
Preface email messages with "teacherken" so I know they are not spam.

I am fortunate to teach at a high school, Eleanor Roosevelt in Greenbelt MD, that by any independent measure is considered very good. I can offer many statistics that would justify that description, of which my favorite is that my alma mater, Haverford College, last year accepted 3 of the 4 students who applied, and the college only accepted 26% of ts applicants.

Last April the Washington Post Magazine had a piece entitled “High Schools That Work.” Our school was the first featured, and you can read the beginning of the article as well as the portrait of our school here. As a result of that article, I received an invitation to make a presentation on the subject to the annual conference of the Maryland State Teachers Association. That presentation was Friday morning.



Readers may have noticed that I have not been posting much recently. I have been very busy with soccer, with representing Haverford at college fairs, but also busy coordinating the five of us who made the presentation. I will not attempt to present all we offered those who attended our session, from a variety of school systems around the state. Let me offer a few facts, and then the key handout.

We can brag about the many awards we have won, as a school, by our teachers, and by our students. But were the session to be more than a brag session, we had to present in a fashion accessible to others and with ideas that they could take back to their own schools. We have a number of outstanding students because we are a Science and Technology magnet program to which students are admitted by competitive examination. Setting up such a program is not something accessible to most other schools, although less than 1/3 of our students are part of that program. We are in a system that has allowed a fair amount of site based management funds, and while we can describe the creative ways we have applied those funds, that again is something that may not be possible for other schools. Finally, a key to our success is our use of a hybrid schedule. We have some classes which are presented for a year in 45 minute periods, others for a semester in 45 minute periods, and others which have a year’s worth of content presented in a semester in a block of 95 minutes (including the 5 minutes between the two periods). There is no software that supports such a schedule, so our scheduler does it all by hand, which considering the great variety of courses we offer (including 17 different Advanced Placement courses and dozens of other electives including things like Comparative Religions, two forensic science courses, Child Development, American Sign Language and six foreign languages) and the fact that we offer an extra “zero” period before the start of our school day and some students take 8 or 9 (skipping lunch) courses at a time, is quite an achievement, and something that has seemed intimidating to everyone who has come to examine what we do.

We are greatly committed to the development of the whole student. This includes meeting the physical, artistic and social needs of the students,as well as their intellectual and emotional needs. The first of the goals stated in our philosophy and goals statement is to create life long learners. We do this not only through the great variety of courses we offer, but also through our 80+ student activities, many of which have faculty advisors who are not paid for their service.

It was fun to do the presentation. And we offered a great deal of documentation, including lists of all the activities, statistics on the school and teachers, etc. We were asked by all of the attendees if they could also have a copy of the Powerpoint presentation. That I will not inflict on you. But the blockquote contains the final page of the handouts, which is a summary of the points we thought they might be able to apply in their own schools.

I offer this for several reasons. First, clearly I am proud both of our school and of the presentation that we did. Of greater importance, however, is that effective schools and effective teachers are willing to share. We make available our experience and also attempt to learn from the experience of others. Wise teachers and schools recognize that one cannot simply copy exactly the models of others, because school situations and classroom composition can vary widely. having knowledge a greater variety of approaches can, however, often inspire on to come up with something new -- perhaps a combination of preexisting ideas, perhaps something totally de novo, that can make a positive difference in the lives of our young people. Making that difference is a major reason why I became a school teacher in my very late 40’s.

So, here is that promised document. After you read it, your reaction would be more than welcome.

WHAT YOU CAN APPLY AT YOUR SCHOOL

1 - School should have a clear and appropriate philosophy and set of goals. These are required as part of reaccreditation by Middle States, so it becomes a question of content, not a task that would not otherwise be done.

2 - An administration, led by a principal, which is strongly supportive of teachers and the kinds of commitments that the faculty at ERHS makes. Our success as a school would not be possible without the leadership of the principals who have served there. Their willingness to go out on limbs on behalf of the mission of our school has been key to our successes.

3 - A faculty willing to go beyond the requirements of contract, Our hybrid schedule and zero period, which is a key to our academic success, would be impossible without the willing support of our faculty. The wide variety of student activities, a key to the commitment of out students and essential to fulfilling our goal of educating the whole child, is only possible because of the large number of faculty willing to serve as unpaid sponsor for activities that matter to the students. Our Teacher Coordinators (department chairs) play a major role in the hiring of new staff, assisting in a continuing flow of good teachers.

4 - an incredibly supportive PTSA. Our school is deeply rooted in the support of our community, which starts, but does not end, with the parents. Without their commitment and involvement, it would not possible for us to even attempt many of the things that make a difference in the lives of our students.

5 - the support of the larger community. We unabashedly ask for participation of experts and community members whenever we can, so that our students see their education not as a separate thing but as connected to the larger community. This includes internships in business, at museums, at the National Archives, with major musical organizations, with the state legislature, etc. It includes regular visits by experts to speak with and/or mentor students. The judges for our science fair are outside experts, including some parents, but also people from nearby government agencies such as NASA and USDA and professors from the various universities in the region.

6 - serving as a professional development school, in our case with the University of Maryland at College Park. This provides a regular flow of teacher candidates that we get to see at work in the classroom before we hire them. They will already have familiarity with the Roosevelt Way, a key part of our success.

7 - an ongoing New Teacher induction program. ALL teachers new to the building participate. That means even teachers with 20 years experience but who are new to ERHS. These monthly sessions where they come together to share experiences and to receive training specific to the needs of being at ERHS provides a level of support that can be key to adjusting to our way of doing things. This is supported by the great willingness of incumbent faculty to provide support for those new to the building.

8 - a willingness of the school community to examine itself, to invite in outsiders, and to hear what they have to say. The awards we have won as a school, and that many of our teachers have earned, require opening ourselves up to examination by others. But first we must be reflective about our own practice as we put together our applications. That ongoing practice of self-analysis and reflection is key to our continued success as a school community.

These are just a few of things that you should be able to take back to your own school.

In Quaker Meeting for worship, one only rises to speak if one truly believes one has a message of importance to deliver. The standard by which one judges is not intellectual. In fact, the term “Quaker” comes from the very real sense, which I have experienced, that one cannot do ought but rise to speak - one is impelled by something, or someone, call it God if you will.

This morning I rose, about 20 minutes into the hour. There were several themes that had been percolating in my consciousness. One was the inquiry at www.streetprophets.com about how one’s religion informed one’s politics, or the reverse. Also part of my pondering was that this is the time of college exploration - I am representing my alma mater at college fairs, tonight being the 3rd in a series of 5 in 14 days. And I am writing letters of recommendations for students I have taught.

I cannot here recapitulate exactly what I said. When I moved to rise and speak in meeting, while I am the speaker, and it is usually from my experience and insight that the message arises, in a sense the message is not mine. I am surrendered to the message, and thus cannot claim that I can remember all that I said.

I do note that I remarked on StreetProphets that it was a chicken-egg kind of situation, that I could not really separate the two. About the college work, I noted that I was trying very hard to make my alma mater known, and for the students, to present them in the best light possible. And that such is a very human process, for ourselves and those or that about which we care, to present it as positively as possible.

But I also noted that at college fairs I had to listen, to hear what potential applicants had to say about themselves to know HOW to present Haverford. And that in writing letters of recommendation, I was trying to make a connection between what mattered for the post-secondary institution and what was important about the applicant. And that in all of the interchanges what was important was listening.

George Fox told the early Quakers to walk gladly upon the earth answering that of God in each person we encountered. We expect in that which we express to be listened to, that those to whom we present our thoughts and beliefs will receive them with the presumption that we offer them with integrity. Part of the message that I delivered today was that Fox’s message reminds us that we must operate on the same presumption for others. Certainly we may feel passionately about issues, but if we are not willing to listen for that of God in what others, with whom we may disagree strongly, offer us, we thereby lose the opportunity for that most human of connections. Certainly in politics we must acknowledge the necessity of finding common ground, which is impossible unless we first operate on the basis of the presumption that there is that of God in what someone else offers. We can affirm that, we can respond to that without reacting against the tangential material that may rightly be classified as other, not “that of God.”

I am posting this in several places. For those at StreetProphets, my terminology will not be especially upsetting or challenging. At dailykos and myleftwing, the explicit reference to God may bother some. Please do not let your visceral reaction to certain expressions deafen you to a deeper message.

This posting is not especially profound. What I had to say in Meeting for worship was far more precise, effective, and full of meaning. This recapitulation is but a pale shadow of what I said shortly after 10 this morning.

I concluded the message by noting that my expression on StreetProphets was not in fact accurate. If I am following what I believe as a Quaker, there can be no divide between how I operate in the political sphere and the religious sphere. By this I do not claim that my religion requires a particular political expression. Rather, in both places I am required to be absolutely honest, to listen to others with the intent of discerning “that of God” in what they offer me, even if they don’t think or express using such terminology. To be whole, to be integrated, means that there are no separate compartments, that here I can allowed a little shading of the truth because it is only politics.

Quaker believe in speaking truth to power. That particular expression may well be derived from Islam, which many do not realize. Bayard Rustin was the Quaker who popularized the expression in this country. Speaking truth to power of necessity exposes one to retribution from those who do not wish to be confronted by truth. And yet to do less is to ignore that of God in the one whom you address. Each person is entitled to the truth, to the presumption that s/he can hear and understand truth, that s/he may be expressing that of God even when being venal or manipulative.

Lincoln told us that even as he would not be a slave, neither would he be a slaveowner. My form of that is that I wish to hear truth and honesty, then I have no choice but to operate in a similar fashion.

I do not know if this rambling message is of value to anyone who may read it. In Quaker Meeting I know I am supposed to rise and speak because my knees are knocking and I cannot sit still -- when I rise my voice is assured, and when I sit down and feel relieved, as if a huge weight has been lifted from me. That feeling is confirmed by the responses of others. I do not know how to judge whether the impulse to post this message can have a similar standard of evaluation. Nevertheless I feel compelled to offer it. Do with it what you will.Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
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Today’s educational diary can be found in its original at The Forum for Education and Democracy, which describes itself as

devoted to supporting educational policies and practices that prepare the young for a life of active and engaged citizenship

. The home page offers links for Parents and educators, press, and Policymakers. You can also sign up for an email newsletter.

Among the programs listed on the policy page are “High Quality Schools and Teaching, Equity and Equality, Balanced Decision-Making, Accountability, Forum Projects, and High-Stakes Resting. I want to thank professor Angela Valenzuela of educational equity, politics & policy in Texas for making me aware of this site.


The contents of the blockquote are an article released in September about the victory scored by a small groups of schools in the New York School Performance Standards Consortium that uses performance based assessment combined with a rigorous approach to education. Originally granted a waiver from NY’s Regents testing regime by a previous education commissioner, they were face with the mandate of the new commissioner that they had to be in full compliance with the testing regime, which was contradictory to their educational mission. The article describes in detail how they succeeded in continuing to maintain their exemption from the testing regime. It is an important article for those who are concerned about what testing is doing to our schools, both because it describes an alternative approach to assessment, building support for that approach, and winning a victory, one requiring persuading the public and decision makers to support their approach. I think it worthwhile reading for anyone who is concerned about education and our current misguided insistence on a one-size-fits-all approach to assessment through testing.

The original source of the article can be found here. Because the article has now been widely distributed, the entire article is in the blockquote below. Pleas take the time to read, offer your comments, and if you can make others aware both of the article and of the website / organization from which it is derived.

Challenging Bad Education Policy
by Ann Cook and Phyllis Tashlik
Tuesday Sep 20, 2005

As everyone in education is aware, testing is the nation's dominant education theme and regularly occupies newspaper headlines. And New York State, once considered a leader in innovation and professionalism in education, has become a poster child for high stakes testing. In its high schools, five exit exams are required for graduation. As a result, coursework has become dominated by test preparation and lost any semblance of intellectual rigor, while the drop-out rate has climbed.

This past June, however, a small group of schools won a significant victory. The New York State Board of Regents extended their waiver from the state's high-stakes Regents tests permitting them to continue using their performance-based assessment system and innovative curriculum in lieu of four of the five Regents exams.

 Their battle, however, actually began a decade ago when they were recognized as exemplars of secondary education by former New York State Commissioner of Education Tom Sobol. Believing that their practices promoted "top-down support for bottom up" reform, Sobol designated them Compact for Learning Schools, granted them a waiver from state exams, and directed the Education Department to conduct annual reviews of the schools' performance. With his departure, however, the Board of Regents renounced his initiatives, embraced his successor's agenda, and adopted a one-size-fits-all approach to assessment.

 In response, in 1998 the schools formed the New York Performance Standards Consortium. They were not just saying No to testing. They were offering a better alternative-a system that includes student performance, professional development, curriculum innovation, rubrics for assessment, a documented success rate for college acceptance and perseverance, and oversight provided by an external board (the Performance Assessment Review Board), a group of twenty-two experts on curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

They set about disseminating information about the system, publishing articles in major and minor publications and repeatedly emailing and faxing public officials, journalists, educators, and parents. It became clear they were building something and would not just disappear.

When the Commissioner determined that all "alternative methods" of assessment required approval from a State-appointed panel, the Consortium convened a group of experts to formally present their performance assessment system. The result was devastating. The panel determined that since the system was not a test, it could not be approved. Similarly, the State Education Department (SED) violated the terms of the waiver and never conducted a five-year study to evaluate the system's effectiveness.

Weil Gotshal and Manges, a New York City law firm, working pro bono, sued the Commissioner and the SED arguing that they had acted in an "arbitrary and capricious" manner. Although the State Court of Appeals ruled in the State's favor (customary, when the State is the object of a suit), the case yielded volumes of critical documents. For example, from official minutes of the State's own Technical Advisory Group showed that the State's tests lacked the pro forma technical manual and that some of the official studies intended to demonstrate the reliability and validity of the statewide tests were sparse and inconclusive.

Parents of Consortium students organized Time Out From Testing, a state-wide coalition of grassroot organizations and participated in rallies, petition drives, letter-writing campaigns, press conferences, and background briefings with legislators, policymakers, and members of editorial boards. Teachers, parents, students and members of the business community testified at numerous legislative hearings as did members of the academic community who presented research on the consequences of high stakes testing. In Rochester, Consortium schools helped organize the Coalition for Common Sense in Education, a group that linked the academic community with concerned parents and teachers.

As learning standards eroded, the Consortium instituted a series of panels including historians, writers, scientists, literature professors, and mathematicians to review the Regents exams for overall quality, alignment with state standards, accuracy as an indicator of college readiness, and skill level demonstrated by exam anchor papers as compared with Consortium students' papers. Part of each session involved panel members actually taking a portion of the exam. This reality check led them to strongly condemn the use of such instruments to determine either subject competence or high school graduation.

In the report on the science exam, scientists concurred that, "nothing in the test gave students insights into scientific thinking, such as "developing deductive reasoning; stating and testing hypotheses; . . . understanding estimation and the difference between correlation and causation; and recognizing and understanding patterns . . ." Similarly, other panelists said about the American history exam: "It's bad enough that valuable time is spent teaching for the test. . . . But worse is the very real possibility that what will be taught in those sessions is a very simple-minded notion of what history is."

It was this realization that led Eric Foner, former head of the American Historical Association and DeWitt Clinton professor of American History at Columbia, to send a letter of protest signed by more than twenty-five leading historians to the Board of Regents.

Fortunately, the SED often became an unwitting accomplice in the struggle. One parent caused a major embarrassment when her research on bowdlerized literature passages in English Regents exams was exposed on the front page of The New York Times and in The New Yorker magazine. Then some 70 percent of the students taking the math exam failed; unable to renorm the test quickly, school officials replaced scores with students' coursework grade. In physics, too, there were norming problems and errors on chemistry, biology and American history exams.

Demands for accountability escalated. In 2003, the New York State legislature held hearings to examine the Regents exam policy. More than ninety percent of the 2000 parents, teachers, testing experts, union officials, students, and members of the business community who testified were highly critical. Evidence presented by researchers documented that New York State now ranked 45th in the nation in graduation rates; furthermore, Black and Hispanic youngsters had the lowest graduation rate of any state!

As criticism gathered strength, organizations like Fairtest, the Coalition of Essential Schools, and the United Federation of Teachers played critical roles, providing data and the latest research findings, organizing email campaigns across the country, and speaking with key policymakers at critical moments.

The climate for change had been created. In the Republican-led State Senate, a bill extending the Consortium's waiver passed unanimously. Responding to pressure, the Chair of the Assembly Education committee secured a one-year extension of the waiver. Consortium members and supporters continued to meet with individual policy makers, though those meetings often revealed the dilemma commonly faced by advocacy: In private, public officials were sympathetic, even supportive; but in public their posture reversed.

In 2005 the Senate again sponsored legislation. After a heated debate, it passed the Consortium bill 51 to 9. The Speaker of the Assembly again yielded to pressure and brokered a deal, extending the waiver for five more years and proposing a comparative research study that may yet influence system-wide changes.

Of paramount importance in this debate was the recently completed College Performance Study (M. Foote, 2005) documenting the college performance of Consortium graduates. Tracking students into their third semester of college, the three-year study drew on official transcripts for over 750 graduates. The results were impressive: not only were Consortium graduates attending competitive colleges, they also showed higher than average persistence rates and earned above average GPAs; all this, despite the fact that Consortium students represent a more disadvantaged population than students throughout New York City high schools.

The Consortium's performance assessment system offers a powerful alternative to New York's failed policy of high-stakes and excessive testing. Its victory against a rigid and stultifying system will demonstrate, over time, that students can succeed when teaching and curriculum, rather than testing regimens and punishments, define assessment.

The lessons of this hard-won, improbable victory are clear and urgent: Attention must refocus on the classroom. Teachers, other educators, and parents must reassert the centrality of the classroom as the starting point for education policy, not the dead-end for top-down orders. As Doug Christiansen, Nebraska Commissioner of Education has said, educators must assume leadership roles, for unless they do, "change isn't going to happen."

Policymakers need to visit more schools; listen to those who work closest with children; study the abundant research that has been published on good teaching practices; ensure that policies permit flexibility to meet the diverse needs of children and school communities; and promote alternatives that work.

The victory in New York shows us that changing bad policy is something worth fighting for. Despite formidable opposition, change can occur and people just like us--teachers, parents, students, and allies from every corner--can make it happen.

Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
Email accepted at "kber at earthlink dot net"
Preface email messages with "teacherken" so I know they are not spam.

In many of the posts on education, by others as well as me, one encounters laments about the reading level of students. I know that I often receive students in high school who do not read anywhere near grade level. When I inquire about their reading habits, I often find that they have little access to books. Most of what they read is required by school, and as a teacher I know that many of their textbooks do not really encourage one to read. Reading thus becomes a task rather than a pleasure. And absent a delight with the written word, students rarely have the requisite background for developing writing skills.

I have little time today for blogging, as I will spend about 7 hours representing my alma mater (Haverford College) at a fair for gifted African-American students in the Washington DC area (including several of my own students). But I could not resist offering the piece below. Entitled A Reading Bill of Rights for Indiana’s Young Adolescents, I encountered it in the weekly email from the Public Education Network. It is put out by the Middle Grades Reading Network of the University of Evansville, and I think well worth the time to read, and then to reflect on what it says.



 

All young adolescents in Indiana need access to the kinds of reading opportunities that will allow them to grow up to be successful members of a literate community. It is the responsibility of the entire community to offer support for providing these opportunities. Our ultimate goal is the creation of Communities of Readers where each young adolescent will be able to fulfill his or her potential as a reader.

     To that end, we believe that Indiana's young adolescents deserve:


* Access to current, appealing, high-interest, and useful books and other reading materials in their classrooms, homes, public and school libraries, and other locations within the community.

* Schools that feature an environment where reading is valued, promoted, and encouraged.

* Dedicated time during the school day to read for a variety of purposes - for pleasure, information, and exploration.

* Teachers and school librarians who continually seek to renew their skills and excitement in sharing reading with young people through participation in diverse professional development activities.

* Public libraries that provide services specifically designed to engage young people's interest in reading.

* Community-based programs that encourage them in all aspects of their reading development.

* Opportunities for reading at home and support from schools, public libraries, and community agencies to families with young adolescents to encourage family reading activities.

* Communities of Readers in which all adults - in school, at home, and across the community - serve as role models and provide guidance to ensure that reading is a priority in young people's lives.

Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
Email accepted at "kber at earthlink dot net"
Preface email messages with "teacherken" so I know they are not spam.

because I was still being spammed by people with blogger ids. While I could have returned the favor, such is not my style.

Instead I have hidden all comments and turned off the ability to add further comments.

you may read most of what I have to say also at www.myleftwing.com where I am a front apge poster, usually on education, and at www.dailykos.com. If you go to www.dailykos.com/user/teacherken you will see my diary entries. At either of the above locations you will b e able to post comments once you are registered.


Comments, suggestions and even rude remarks are welcomed!
Email accepted at "kber at earthlink dot net"
Preface email messages with "teacherken" so I know they are not spam.

As some may know, I am one of several educational bloggers who has participated in a dialog with Governor Tom Vilsack of Iowa, and others, over at HeartlandPac. Recently the governor posted a message entitled Focusing on a complete education, in which he comments about his concern that test scores in middle school seem to show a decline in achievement as students progress from elementary grades to the middle school years.

What appears below is the comment I posted in response. My comment does not address all of the issues Gov. Vilsack raises, but does draw on my experience in teaching 7th and 8th graders , something I did for 4 of my 10 previous years in public school teaching.

Because I believe education is such an important issue for the future of our nation, and because I have little time recently for doing any other blogging, I am offering this as my educational diary of the day.

-----


You deserve some feedback, and given the importance of the issue of education, I thought I will put my money (okay, my words) where my mouth is.

Let me start by noting that in my 10 previous years of public school teaching 4 were spent in middle school, 3 with 8th grades in a grade 7-8 school that was 93% African-American, and one with 7th graders in a 6-6-8 school that drew mainly (not exclusively) from a fairly wealthy (and white) section of Arlington County VA.

The phenomenon of test scores decreasing as students ascend the grade ladder is one on which a number of astute observers have commented over the years, among which is Gerald Bracey. And yet few people have meaningfully (at least in my opinion) examine why that might be. To understand, one has to think from the perspective of a modern adolescent, with ages ranging from 11-15. For one thing, one is dealing with the onset of puberty, a period of life with all kinds of additional pressures, as I hope many here can recall. There are biological changes in one's body, one's appearance. Hormonal balances are not stable. These are issues that have a profound affect on the worldview and lives of our young people, and far too often our schools do not fully account for this.

It is also a time where students are beginning to try to define themselves independently from their parents. That often creates stress at home, in ways that may not result in a positive environment in which school activities can flourish.

And also, it is a time when the structure and emphases of far too many of our schools robs the students of joys of learning and of exploration.

Remember, the vast majority of students begin schooling with excitement, with a real desire to learn. We have known for years that the further they progress up the K-12 ladder, the less they retain that excitement, that joy of learning for its own sake. Increasingly they absorb from the (no so ) hidden curriculum that what matters is scores on tests and grades. This tends to discourage the kind of intellectual exploration that involves risk of failure. And yet it is precisely such "risky" exploration that tends to result in the greatest amount of real learning, including the ability to self-correct, to monitor one's own learning processes. Instead students begin to narrow the focus of their academic endeavors. It becomes very common in middle school to hear the plaintive inquiry "is this going to e on the test?" In one sense the student is exercising mature economic thinking -- how do I maximize my score on the tests (which adults seem to think are so important) if I spend any time learning something that won't be tested. That puts pressure on teachers not to spend time on things that won't appear on the test, even if those are things that excite the students, or which provide context in which the testable content can be better understood.

Middle School is also a time where some students begin to systematically attempt to discern what it is the teacher wants, rather than what the truth might be. After all, teachers have a great deal of power over their lives -- they give the grades, they can refer a student to the administrative and disciplinary folks, they can give you detention, taking you away from friends and things that are far more enjoyable. And they can make the dreaded call home to the parents, which can result in consequences from no tv to severe beatings, depending upon the health of the family and the dynamics of the family culture. It becomes reasonable for students to devote effort to figuring out what the teacher wants so that their efforts are maximally directed towards those things that will result in positive consequences such as higher grades and the absence of negative consequences such as those just described.

The problems noted begin in high school. They clearly intensify for many students during their high school years. Again, far too much of what students are learning are not the real intellectual or moral lessons they should be learning. If the consequences of test scores are made increasingly severe, then it becomes far easier to justify and rationalize actions such as narrowing one's intellectual endeavors to that which will be tested, and even to cut corners -- or worse -- in the effort to achieve higher scores. We (adults in general) threaten them with consequences, such as being held back, or not graduating, or not getting into a good college, or getting a good job.

I accept that we will continue to test students, although I believe we need far less testing than we already have, and that such measurement should be done with instruments that are far more subtle than the ubiquitous 4 or 5 answer selected response exams upon which we so heavily rely because they are easy to score. We are measuring, but since the answer is binary, with no partial credit for a second best answer, and no opportunity for the students to correct her reasoning, the items are far too blunt to provide MEANINGFUL information to either the student or the teacher about the proper correctives that are needed.

But I do think we need to examine whether or increasing emphasis on "performance" is not in fact contributing ot the decline in the scores on the very tests we are using to measure (and I think not all that accurately) what our children know and can do.

This is not merely a question of educational philosophy. It also requires an understand of adolescent psychology, family dynamics, and social pressures. In the latter category one can not that by middle school years one can already notice the phenomenon where some Africa-American students face the pressure of NOT succeeding because if they succeed they will be accused of "acting white." It is also the time where gangs seriously begin their attempts at recruitment. Drugs, alcohol and sex begin to be parts of the lives of far too many students.

If we want our students to truly thrive, in every sense of the word, we cannot merely look at test scores and decide how we are going to improve them. We need to seriously reexamine the way we structure our schools, the expectations we place on our adolescents both within and without the walls of the schools. We need to accept that the official curriculum is not all that our students learn. And we need to be honest about what we - the adults and the society we run - are doing to our adolescents. Lower test scores are at most a symptom of a far more serious issue.