From the Trenches of Public Ed.

Time to say, "Good-bye!"

2009-05-25T09:41:00.000-07:00

I've really been struggling with this blog lately. The enthusiasm just hasn't been there, and I've felt like I'm just saying the same things over and over again. What makes it worse is that my Catholic conscience works on me, and makes me feel guilty when I don't post at least once a week or check on the comments as often as I should. Yesterday, I went to church, and our priest talked about Memorial Day being a time for good-byes. It occurred to me that it's time for this blog to say good-bye. Unlike Douglas MacArthur, I don't want to just fade away. I've always found it depressing when I've gone to check out other blogs that I've read, and there hasn't been a post for a week, then a month, then several months. If I'm going to end this, I want to end it with an exclamation point. In doing that, however, I want to give voice one more time to some of those points I've tried to make over the last three years. So here goes!

I firmly believe that public schools in America are doing a better job than they're given credit for. Oh, we have our flaws--there's no question about that, and I've written about a number of them. When I say we are doing are doing a good job, however, I base that on two basic points.

First of all, in the great majority of public schools around the nation, any kid who really wants a good education can get one. Our schools in Warroad are probably about average--maybe a little above--and it is very clear that our kids are getting what they want. The kids who don't give a rip don't get very much out of it, but the kids who want to go to a vo-tech are able to do that, and the kids really want to get prepared for college are able to do so. Our district's schools have failed our AYP in math for the last two years, and judging from our junior class, I'm guessing we will again this year. Yet, I recently talked to a 2007 graduate who is in pre-med, and he didn't have to take any math in college because of all the "college in the classroom" credits he was able to gain in our "failing" school. As I've said before, I have three sons who also graduated from Warroad. One of them is very bright, but the other two are apples who didn't fall far from the tree. All three of them went to college, all three graduated from college, and all three have good jobs in the fields they graduated from today. And believe me, the success my kids have enjoyed is not unique in Warroad, and it is not unique among kids who have graduated from public schools across the nation.

The biggest problem in American public education today is that so many kids don't put much effort into their own education. Some kids are incredibly lazy and irresponsible, and that problem is combined with the fact that the American public does not want to put too much emphasis on school in general and academics in particular. And that leads to my second point: American public schools are giving American parents what they want.

Bill Gates and other business gurus can complain all they want, and say that American schools should be turning out more academic wizards. I'm not saying they're wrong, but that is not what the American public wants. The American public wants their kids to be "well-rounded." That means they want them get some academics, but they also want schools to enable their kids to be be sports stars, and/or work part-time jobs, and to be able to go on family vacations that last a week or more during the school year, and have homecoming and frosty-fest coronations and pep rallies during the school day, and use class time to vote for kings and queens and other things, and to be able to miss a day or two here and there for various other reasons and still get decent grades. Bill Gates might not like it, and sometimes I might not like it, but we are "public" schools, so it's our job to give the public what it wants. And that's what we do.

Finally, my last post wouldn't be complete if I didn't harp on the subject I've harped on more than any other. As good as public education is, it could be so much better. Public school teachers and principals need more power to demand better effort and behavior from our students. The bottom line on that is that it has to be easier to kick kids out.

I know how harsh that sounds, but it really isn't. Believe it or not, I am not an old curmudgeon. In fact, I think it's fair to say that I'm one of the most popular teachers in our school. But 35 years as a teacher and coach has taught me that kids understand limits. Make it clear to them that a certain level of behavior and a certain level of effort is required and there will be very few who will have to be shown the door. And for those who are shown the door, allow them to come back and try again next semester or next year if they finally realize that their education matters. I have seen too many bright kids allowed to get by with performing miserably, and I've even seen some end up dropping out because we were so damned tolerant.

Hey, it's been fun! And just because I'm shutting down this blog, that doesn't mean I won't be visiting yours. You never know, maybe I'll get the itch again and open up another blog, and heck, there's no law saying that I can't come back sometime and post on this one again if the spirit moves me. After all, Stephen King announced his retirement a few years ago, and it seems to me I've read two or three books that he's written since then. In any case, thanks to all of you who stopped by now and then to read my pearls of wisdom, and especially to those of you who left comments. You are the ones who made this fun.

Four days anyone?

2009-05-17T02:54:00.000-07:00

Next year our school district will be jumping into an experiment that only a handful of districts in the state of Minnesota have ventured into--the four-day school week. That ought to be interesting!

Our small district has to cut around $900,000, and we hope to save around $140,000 by doing this. Obviously, this has created a tremendous amount of controversy in our community. Some people think the teachers are getting a heckuva deal out of that, but they are a little confused. Our class periods will go from 49 to 62 minutes, so we'll actually have a couple more minutes of student contact time over the week than we do now.

I have mixed feelings about it. When I look at other cuts we might have to make if we don't go to the four-day week, I'm willing to give it a shot. The junior member of our social studies department is an outstanding teacher and person. If he got cut, especially when I am eligible for retirement, it would make me sick.

It's going to cause a tremendous amount of work for me, however, because I'm an organization freak, and I'm going to have to restructure just about everything I do. I wrote my own textbook, and everything is set up for those 49 minute class periods. I'll have to re-do that, along with all the quizzes that go with it, and all of my PowerPoints for the year. And that's just for one of my four class preparations.

Most of our high school teachers have feelings similar to mine. If it means not having to make more cuts, we're for it. Our elementary teachers, however, are almost unanimously against it. They are not enthusiastic about the longer days for their little ones. Right now, our classes start at 8:19 AM, and we go until 3 PM. Next year, we'll be starting at 8 AM and going until 4 PM.

I must admit that having three-day weekends sounds pretty good, especially in the spring and fall when I'm not coaching. The other benefit I see is that by getting rid of Fridays, we will be getting rid of the day when kids most frequently miss classes for sports. Our spring sports kids miss a ridiculous amount of school, so right now, anything that will cut back on "make-up" correcting sounds pretty good.

On the other hand, when we get into our seventeen week hockey season, heading off for practices after that longer day is going to be a little harder.

A lot of rose colored glasses

2009-05-05T04:28:00.000-07:00

Right now there seems to be a lot of optimism about the difference the new administration is going to make in education. I'm afraid that there are a lot of people looking through rose-colored glasses. I really like Barack Obama, and the things he has been doing in the economy and foreign policy sound good to me. But I must confess that I don't consider myself an expert at those things, so I can only hope that what he is doing there is more real than what he is doing for American education. Since I've spent my last 35 years working with kids in classrooms, I do consider myself an expert at that, and I'm afraid when it comes to education, the Obama administration is all smoke and mirrors.

Arne Duncan, the new Secretary of Education is about to embark on a mission to gain input about how to overhaul No Child Left Behind.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Education Secretary Arne Duncan is a man on a mission: to hear what teachers, students and parents in at least 15 states think about No Child Left Behind, the controversial education law championed by former President George W. Bush.

President Barack Obama has pledged to overhaul the law, but he has been vague about how far he would go, or whether he would scrap it altogether...

"I don't know if 'scrap' is the word," Duncan told reporters last week. "Where things make sense, we're going to keep them. Where things didn't make sense, we're going to change them."

...Duncan gives the law credit for shining a spotlight on kids who need the most help. No Child Left Behind pushes schools to boost the performance of low-achieving students, a group that typically includes minority kids, English-language learners and kids with disabilities.

"Forevermore in our country, we can't sweep those huge disparities with outcomes between white children and Latino children and African-American children, we can't sweep those under the rug ever again," Duncan said.

Yet Duncan has many criticisms of No Child Left Behind, and he has plenty of company.

One of Duncan's ideas to fix the program is to change its name.

"I do think the name 'No Child Left Behind' is absolutely toxic; I think we have to start over," Duncan said. He has said he would like to hold a contest for school kids to come up with a new name.

Hey, that ought to do it! I've got news for Secretary Duncan. As long as the goal of the program is to provide quality education for every kid whether they like it or not, especially while we provide due process rights for every kid who has no interest in getting an education but wants to be in school so he can clown around for his friends, we will continue to have these kinds of results:

Since the law's passage, students have made modest gains, at least in elementary and middle school, the grades that are the focus of No Child Left Behind. The biggest gains have come among lower-achieving students, the kids who now are getting unprecedented attention.

The story is different in high school, where progress seems stalled and where the dropout rate, a dismal one in four children, has not budged.

Jon Schnur, who has been an advisor to President Obama is another optimist. Schnur talks about "breakthroughs" that have happened in "hundreds of schools" around the nation. Breakthroughs are great, but I wonder how many of those schools that he talks about are high schools. I'll bet not very many. And if progress is made from those breakthroughs in elementary schools only to be lost as kids move on through the upper grades, what good are they?

NAEP, Dumb Experts & Smart Experts

2009-05-03T02:43:00.000-07:00

The NAEP test results have been out for awhile, so there's been a fair amount of scuttlebutt about them during the last week. There are things in the results to give those who want to be hopeful some reasons to be hopeful, and for those who want to bash American education to bash it some more, but after eight years of No Child Left Behind, the bottom line seems to be that not a lot has changed. Surprise, surprise!

I happened to have CNN on as Jack Cafferty, one of that network's Bill O'Reilly wanna-bes, went on one of his rants. (Is anybody else sick of "angry white males" in telejournalism?) Jack is an expert on everything, of course, and he complained that after all the money we've spent on education, NAEP scores hadn't improved in forty years. Jack blamed the teachers unions, and he wants to start firing teachers. Jack is an idiot--at least on this issue.

Lately, however, I've been reading an "expert" who actually does seem to have a clue on educational issues--Malcolm Gladwell. One of the most important complaints about American education has to do with the achievement gap between upper and middle income and lower income kids. Critics have often used this to complain that American education isn't working. Well, here's a surprise. In his book, Outliers, Gladwell uses test scores to defend American education. He shows that lower-income kids keep up with middle and upper income kids during the school year, but they fall farther and farther behind during our long summer vacations. His conclusion: American schools work! Please pause while I faint.

Gladwell is also the first expert I've read who understands that the reason kids from other nations--Asian ones in particular--get a better education than American kids is that they try harder. In discussing the superior scores of Korean and Japanese students in math, Gladwell says, "We sometimes think being good at mathematics as an innate ability. You either have 'it' or you don't. But..it's not so much ability as attitude. You master mathematics if you are willing to try...Success is a function of persistence and doggedness." Gladwell points out that the problem is a cultural one. If we are going to improve education in America, we are going to have to address our culture regarding school.

Gladwell uses the KIPP Schools as an example where the mindset of students from the inner-cities, or their culture, has successfully been changed. He gives an example of a day in the life of a student named Marita:

I wake up at five-forty-five a.m. to get a head start. I brush my teeth, shower. I get some breakfast at school, if I am running late. Usually I get yelled at because I am taking too long. I meet my friend Diana and Steven at the bus stop, and we get the number one bus. I leave school at five p.m, and if I don't lollygag around, then I will get home around five-thirty. Then I say hi to my mom and really quickly start my homework. And if it's not a lot of homework that day, it will take me two to three hours, and I'll be done around nine p.m. Or if we have essays, then I will be done like ten p.m., or ten-thirty p.m.

Sometimes my mom makes me break for dinner. I tell her I want to go straight through, but she says I have to eat. So around eight, she makes me break for dinner for, like, a half-hour, and then I get back to work. Then usually after that, my mom wants to hear about school, but I have to make it quick because I have to get in bed by eleven p.m. So I get all my stuff ready, and then I get into bed. I tell her about the day and what happened, and by the time we are finished, she is on the brink of sleeping, so that's probably around eleven-fifteen. Then I go to sleep, and the next morning, we do it all over again.

Gladwell argues that Marita's trade-off of much of her childhood freedom for the opportunity to a promising future, especially when compared to the future of a typical disadvantaged child, is worth it. I can't argue with that, but I know how some people feel about KIPP, and I'm not proposing that we become KIPP. More important, I don't think we have to. In order to provide a first class education to American students, I don't think we have to force them to, as Gladwell says, have "the hours of a lawyer trying to make partner or of a medical resident." Nevertheless, while we don't have to go as far as KIPP, we should try to learn from them. They may take it a bit far, but I think we need to move in their direction. Screw around with merit pay if you want. Screw around with choice, standards, and blah, blah, blah, and we will continue to see little change. If we really want to improve American education, Gladwell is right. We are going to have to do something to change the mindset and culture of our students.

Choice proponents: What about the children left behind?

2009-04-24T16:02:00.000-07:00

Joanne Jacobs, a promoter of charter schools, has a piece today promoting vouchers. Those are certainly two of the top two items on the list of those who consider themselves "educational reformers." I think there are situations in which vouchers are appropriate, and I also have to acknowledge that there are some charter schools that do some wonderful things. Nevertheless, I don't think anyone would consider me to be a big fan of either, so I have a question for those who are. What about the children left behind?

Charter schools and private schools have a definite advantage over the public schools that are the objects of the reformers scorn. Any student who attends charter or private schools are there because their parents have decided that they wanted their children to attend that particular school. That, in itself, indicates that the parents have some interest in their children's education. Students at public schools, on the other hand, are assigned to them. Some parents might want their kids to go to a particular public school, but there will also be a number of students whose parents couldn't care less. That means that any private or charter school, at least to some extent, is skimming the cream.

There is one thing that successful private and charter schools have in common, and that is good discipline. The bottom line of the good discipline those schools have is a certain reality that has to be in the back of students', parents', and teachers' minds: If a student doesn't meet the behavioral and performance standards of the school, he or she will be gone. In Sweating the Small Stuff, a book about six successful inner-city schools, a teacher is quoted as telling a misbehaving student, "If you're going to act like that, you won't be able to stay here."

If we take a kid out of an inner-city school that isn't doing well, and put him into a situation where all of the students have parents who wanted them to go to that school, and the school is able to maintain good discipline, how can the student not do better? The one thing that is amazing to me is that the results from studies comparing kids who have gone to voucher and charter schools with those who have remained in public schools are not more clear.

In any case, in a public school district that is not particularly good, I can certainly understand a parent wanting to send their child elsewhere. But once all the parents who want to do that pull their kids out of that public school, what do you have left? Do we just write off the kids who remain? What ever happened to No Child Left Behind?

The argument that "choice" advocates make is that the competition will force the public schools to improve. Balderdash! Even Sol Stern, who made that argument in a book a few years ago has finally come to the conclusion that that doesn't happen.

Whether you are for choice or against it, doesn't it make sense to give public schools the same power in dealing with their students--and therefore to maintain good discipline--that the good private and charter schools have? Wouldn't all kids be better off if we did that?

Strip search?

2009-04-22T14:53:00.000-07:00

I am usually all for giving schools more power when it comes to discipline, but I'm not so sure about schools being able to conduct strip searches. The Supreme Court heard arguments dealing with this case yesterday.

Savana Redding was 13 in 2003 when Safford, Ariz., Middle School officials, on a tip from another student, ordered her to remove her clothes and shake out her underwear looking for pills. The district bans prescription and over-the-counter drugs...

Vice Principal Kerry Wilson took Redding to his office to search her backpack. When nothing was found, Redding was taken to a nurse's office where she says she was ordered to take off her shirt and pants. Redding said they then told her to move her bra to the side and to stretch her underwear waistband, exposing her breasts and pelvic area. No pills were found.

What makes this so bad is that they were looking for Ibuprofen--not exactly a dangerous narcotic--and the tip turned out to be false.

The girl said that it was the most humiliating experience of her life, and I believe her. Let's face it--there aren't a lot of 13-year-olds who feel great about their bodies. One can only imagine how an innocent girl felt being forced to go through that.

Obviously, there are serious issues here. What if the girl had actually had the drugs? Would that make the search okay? What if the drugs in question were more serious ones? What if she had been accused of having some sort of weapon?

I don't know.

The madness of keeping criminals in schools

2009-04-19T02:40:00.000-07:00

On the tenth anniversary of Columbine, I came upon this article by Caitlin Flanagan as I was going through Joanne Jacobs site. Some of what the article said was music to my ears (or eyes).

Joanne's post also deals with an article that puts the lie to the idea that the two thugs were simply victims of bullying, but this one gives a brief history of the two murderers.

The one aspect of Columbine that seemed unworthy of examination -- when it came to pondering the policy changes that might actually make American schools safer places -- was the fact that the two killers had a long track record of doing exactly what deeply disturbed teenage boys have been doing since time out of mind: getting in trouble -- lots of it -- with authority.

Ten months before their shooting spree, Harris and Klebold were charged and convicted of stealing tools from a parked van. They were sentenced to a "juvenile diversion" program, which was intended -- by dint of counseling, classes, and the coordinated efforts of school administrators, social workers and police officers -- to keep the boys out of the criminal-justice system. According to the records of that experience, Harris reported having homicidal feelings, obsessive thoughts and a temper. Both boys were placed in anger management, although -- strangely, given Klebold's history of alcohol use and his submission of a dilute urine sample to his minders -- they were excused from the substance-abuse class.

Back at school (which they attended throughout their enrollment in the juvenile-diversion program), they smoked cigarettes in the hollow behind campus, cut classes and blew off schoolwork. According to Dave Cullen's new book, "Columbine," when Klebold carved obscenities into a freshman's locker and was confronted by a dean, "Dylan went ballistic. He cussed him out, bounced off the walls, acted like a nutcase." Both boys also picked on younger children and got into fights.

Here's the part that I really liked!
...There was a time when boys like these would have been labeled "juvenile delinquents" and removed from the society and company of good kids, whose rights were understood to supersede those of known offenders against the law. It was once believed that good kids should be neither endangered nor influenced by criminals-in-training.

Maybe it's time we started believing that again.

Joanne's post also includes this quote from Flanagan's article: "...to expel a student in most public school districts is an arduous business. An expulsion hearing is required, and parents may choose to appeal the decision, a process that rains down a world of legal woe on whatever teachers and administrators have been involved in the action."

I don't know about other states, but in Minnesota it's worse than that. The school district that expels the student is still responsible for providing the education for the expelled student. That means hiring a full-time tutor for the student. When considering the legal costs involved and the greater costs of educating the troublemaker outside of school, districts can't afford to expel anybody no matter how bad they are. It's ridiculous!

Flanagan also says this:

It is, of course, the responsibility of the state to provide some sort of education to all its children under the age of 18, and so for a host of legal, moral and economic reasons we end up with an ugly truth about our nation's schools: By design, they contain within them -- right alongside the good kids who are getting an education and running the yearbook and student government -- kids whose criminal rehabilitation is supposedly being conducted simultaneously with their academic instruction.

As someone who taught school for a decade and who has now been a mother for about as long, I can tell you that -- when it comes to children -- the rigid exercise of "due process" in matters of correction and discipline makes for high comedy at best and shared tragedy at worst.

A big "Amen!" to that. The problem is that education is viewed as a right. It shouldn't be. I'm all for our society providing the opportunity for all kids to get an education, but that shouldn't make it a right. If a kid comes into a school and acts like a criminal, he should be kicked out. Period!

If only we could make teaching more like coaching!

2009-04-05T02:30:00.000-07:00

About a month ago, I finished up another hockey season. Coaching hockey in Warroad is very demanding in terms of time, energy, and emotion, so I always look forward to the freedom I'll have when the season ends. But when the season ends, I always feel a little empty. I love teaching--I really do. But the fulfillment I get from that doesn't come close to matching the feeling of fulfillment I get from coaching.

As a coach, I feel much more important to my players than I ever do to my students as a teacher. A major reason for this is simply time. I'm not sure whether I spent more time this winter with our hockey team or with my wife. Practices, games, tournaments, over-night trips, and bus rides all add up. Because of all that time, a coach gets the opportunity to talk to players that a teacher can never get with students. I don't know how many times I sat down and talked individually to players this year, but it was a lot. More often than not, kids respond to these talks with real gratitude, and I'd come away from that feeling pretty good.

One reason the talks I had with players were so meaningful is that the kids cared so much about what we were talking about. It's tough to match that when I talk to a student about their performance in American History or Economics. One can argue about whether or not sport is too important to young athletes, but the bottom line is that it is very important to them. Although there will be some grumbling while kids are going through difficult skating drills, deep down they expect and actually want to be pushed. I don't get that feeling very often in the classroom.

The bottom line is that kids who are out for a sport want to be there. I firmly believe that, at least at the high school level, school should be the same way. In other words, it should not be compulsory. Public education should be there for any young person who wants it, but it shouldn't be forced on anyone who doesn't want it. In fact, it can't be forced on anyone, because there is no way that you can force someone to learn who isn't interested in doing so.

Finally, as a coach--even though I am just an assistant coach--I have real authority. If a player ever becomes a liability to what we are trying to accomplish on our team, our coaching staff does not have to put up with him. Players can be dismissed from our team at any time. Everybody knows that--coaches, players, and parents. Partially as a result of that, the power that coaches have in this area rarely has to be used. During my twenty years at Warroad, only two players have had to be dismissed.

I often criticise so-called educational experts, but now I'm going use a quote that I got from Diane Ravitch's Left Back. In 1933 Isaac Kandel said this: [There is] "one part of our educational system, secondary and higher, in which there is no compromise with standards, in which there is rigid selection both of instructors and students, in which there is no soft pedagogy, and in which training and sacrifice of the individual for common ends are accepted without question. I refer, of course, to the organization of athletics." He suggested that if American schools became more like their athletic programs, they would be reinvigorated.

That statement was made over 75 years ago, but it still holds true today.

U.S. Defense Spending: Did you know this???

2009-04-03T16:53:00.000-07:00

Before I start, I should say that this has nothing to do with education--unless you want to relate it to all the complaints we hear about how much money is spent on it.

About a month ago, I had CNN on in the morning as I was getting ready to go to school, and they had a very brief news piece about defense spending in China. They said China was increasing its defense spending for the coming year by 15 percent, and they also said that meant that the Chinese had increased spending on their military by double digits every year for two decades.

I found that to be terribly alarming. I thought, those darned Chinese with that huge population and their rapidly growing economy are becoming a real threat to us.

The only thing that made me feel good about this was that I thought this would be a good current event item to assign to my American History classes. So when I got to school, I went to Star/Tribune.com to look for an article on this topic, and I found it right away. The first couple of paragraphs basically said what the CNN piece had said, but when I got to the third paragraph, this is what I read:

The country's spending, which puts it on par with Japan, Russia and Britain, is still dwarfed by U.S. military expenditures, which are nearly 10 times as large.

Maybe I'm showing my ignorance here, but I had no idea! I mean, I've always known we spend a lot on our military--and I'm not knocking that--but ten times more than anybody else?!?! Holy Moley!!!!

Am I an idiot? Did you know we spend that much more than anyone else? I have to confess that I had no idea.

NOTE: The Star/Tribune article I am using in this post is not the same one I read initially, but the paragraph regarding U.S. military spending is the same. In the article I read originally, it was in the third paragraph. If you want to find it in the article I linked to for this post, it is in the very last paragraph.

Can't we find a happy medium?

2009-04-01T15:17:00.000-07:00

I was browsing through the blogosphere, and came upon a site called Schools Matter, and ran into this piece on KIPP Schools. I then went to the article about the the KIPP School in Atlanta where some parents pulled their kids out of the school because of what they considered harsh discipline. One student, in a group that was made to go and sit by themselves, wet her pants when she was not allowed to go to the bathroom, and another ended up vomiting. KIPP Schools have a reputation for harsh punishments and humiliation, and even though they are publicly funded, they can get away with that because charter schools are given special leeway by the states. As I read, I couldn't help thinking, "Why can't we have a happy medium?"

I have been lucky this year, but like most traditional public school teachers, there have been many times that I've had to tolerate behavior that I should never have had to tolerate. I did that, because I felt like I didn't have any other choice. I mean there are only so many times you can kick a kid out of class and send him (or her) to the office. Although I haven't had any blatantly disruptive kids this year, I do have kids whose effort is pathetic, and of course, I have to put up with that. We are now in our last marking period, and I'm stuck with two young men who have failed all first three marking periods and show no sign of doing anything different this one. I also have a couple of students who are woefully underachieving, and of course, there's nothing I can do about that other than send deficiency slip after deficiency slip to the parents.

I have no desire to humiliate any students, and I have no desire to bludgeon any students into performing. KIPP Schools have a reputation for producing fantastic test scores, and if it takes harsh punishments and humiliation to do that, and if that's what parents who send their kids to those schools want, I'm not going to knock them. But I teach in a traditional public school, and I'm not looking for fantastic scores; I'm just looking for good solid ones. I just want every kid in our school who wants a good education to be able to get one. If KIPP Schools are going to be allowed to do the things they do, and they are getting the results they are by doing that, wouldn't it make sense to give those of us in traditional public schools just a little more power? Wouldn't it make sense to allow us to demand that kids behave reasonably and make a reasonable effort in order to remain in our classes?

Feelin' like a proud papa!

2009-03-27T05:28:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago I wrote a post about a former player of mine, T.J. Oshie, and then I re-posted it last year. T.J. is probably the most enjoyable player to coach that I've ever worked with. His work ethic was incredible, and he brought a joy to the game (and practices) that was contagious. Last summer, T.J. signed a contract with the St. Louis Blues of the NHL, so this year I have been following the progress of his team religiously.

The Blues are in the middle of a playoff battle, so I checked their website first thing this morning, and was treated to this article and this video.

The title of the article is "Oshie Scores One for the Highlight Reel," and I found (as if I didn't already know) that the Blues see the same things in T.J. as we did when he was in high school.

“He’s unbelievable. He’s so tenacious, just the awareness and his hockey sense is unbelievable,” said goalie Chris Mason, who stopped 21 shots for his first career victory over the Canucks. “He’s part of what this team is all about. He never quits, he’s such a hard worker…he’s a great player.”

"He’s energetic, he’s fresh out there, just doing it all,” Backes added. “Hopefully (management) locks him up for 20 years here.”

Blues’ Head Coach Andy Murray, who typically refrains from praising individual players for a more team-first approach, had rave reviews for his rookie forward.

“I think what people appreciate about our whole team, and T.J. is a pretty good example of this, is hard work,” Murray said. “It’s great to see the nice moves and things like that, but I think (the fans) like his level of determination and they appreciate that.”

In some ways, success can be more difficult to deal with than failure, and I worry about that with T.J., just as I would with anyone. Having 20,000 people chanting "Osh-ie! Osh-ie!" over and over again is heady stuff, and it would make it tough for anyone to maintain their humility. But if anyone can do it, T.J. can. An incident I had personally with T.J. speaks volumes about the type of person he is. The 2005 hockey team that T.J. helped lead to a state championship went undefeated, and that is an incredibly difficult thing to do. The year after T.J. graduated, he came to one of our practices, and after it was over, I said to him, "I don't know if you guys fully appreciate what you accomplished last year." T.J. held up his hand to stop me, and said, "Coach, it's not what 'you guys' accomplished; it's what 'we accomplished.'"

I hope you'll excuse my gushiness, but right now I'm feeling like a proud papa. I can only imagine what T.J.'s dad, Tim, feels like.

Bullying: The state legislature to the rescue

2009-03-25T14:41:00.000-07:00

The Star/Tribune reports that a controversy has developed in the Minnesota State Legislature regarding a bill dealing with bullying in schools.

The proposed state legislation passed its last committee today and is headed for a floor vote. Its author, Sen. Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis, has said current state law, which provides a model policy for school boards to adopt, is vague and has led to inconsistent standards in dealing with the problem.

While the current law covers race, gender and religion, the bill would add other categories, including sexual orientation, national origin and disability. School boards would need to adopt a written policy to enact the language by Jan. 1. Several groups are backing the bill, including OutFront Minnesota, a GLBT advocacy organization, and Education Minnesota, the state's teachers union. But others, such as the Minnesota Family Council, say current anti-bullying statutes are sufficient.

"Any time you elevate particular groups or statuses, it's problematic," said Tom Prichard, head of the council. "I think you keep a general policy across the board, verbal or behavioral, whether it's a gay student who clearly is picked on or beat up or someone who is overweight or for their political persuasion."

Conservatives also believe that a new law might be used to push a certain political agenda.

Three parents with children at Minneapolis' Hale Elementary School spoke about a program called "Welcoming Schools," which they said is not being used to educate against bullying but to promote same-sex marriage and a pro-gay agenda. The Family Council said the program is an example of how anti-bullying legislation can morph into social engineering.

Finally, apparently some of the proponents of the bullying bill aren't completely adverse to bullying themselves.

Parent Lesley Chaudhry said that, as a Muslim, she felt uncomfortable with the content after learning of the program but was chastised by school officials at a parent meeting and her home was hit with graffiti and her children called racial epithets.

I have to admit that anytime our politicians come up with something to tell us how to handle things in our schools, I get nervous. Bullying is a problem, but I think school personnel have become very aware of it, and I don't think anyone puts up with it when they see it. I know that our school district has put a very real emphasis on bullying over the last few years. Sometimes, I actually wonder if there hasn't been too much emphasis on it.

I say that because there is value in kids learning to handle their own affairs without adult intervention. If a teacher is expected to step in every time one kid makes fun of another kid, that is not a good thing. I can remember one situation when a boy was harassing a girl, and she turned on him with a verbal assault that left the young man feeling about two feet tall. End of problem! That would not have happened if I had stuck my nose in. Had I had to worry about a lawsuit if I didn't intervene in a timely manner, I'm sure I would have. I know there is a concern that bullying still happens, but there will always be some things going on in schools that teachers and other school personnel aren't aware of. No matter how many laws are passed, that isn't going to change.

Finally, this is going to sound harsh, but it's true. Most of the bullying that I've seen has not been a result of race, gender, religion, or even that all-time favorite, sexual orientation. In fact, most of the kids I've known who have been victims of "bullying" have done much to bring it on themselves. There are some kids whose social skills are so poor and behavior is so obnoxious that they might as well walk around with sandwich boards that say, "Pick on me!" That is not to say that real bullying of them should be tolerated--it definitely shouldn't. But if they are bailed out every time they complain that someone is being mean to them, we end up encouraging their obnoxious behavior and discouraging their growing up.

Bullying is a bad thing, and it is definitely something that teachers and everyone else in a school should be aware of and try to prevent. I had "the Fermoyle smalls" all through my junior and senior high school years, and I remember spending two days when I was in eighth grade living in fear of a bigger and stronger kid who wanted to beat me up. At the end of the second day, he did just that. So I know how it feels to be bullied, and we should try to prevent that from happening in our schools. But please, let's just be aware that it is possible to go too far.

Needed: good principals with real power

2009-03-19T15:58:00.000-07:00

I checked out Eduwonk the other day and came upon an interesting topic. Eduwonk featured a post by Daniel Willingham about how teachers can get more respect. Willingham argues that one of the biggest obstacles to this is the protection of bad teachers. That reminded me of a conversation I had with a former teacher turned school board chairman a few years ago. He said that teachers will never get the respect they deserve as long as they have tenure and seniority systems. I agree.

There has been a lot of talk in the last several years about the need to reward good teachers and get rid of bad ones. I think there is a relatively simple solution to this--give principals the power to do both things. A couple of years ago, I posted my plan for paying and retaining teachers. Here is that plan:

We start with a normal salary schedule. For anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about, in most places, teachers are put on a salary schedule according to the number of years they have been in their district. Their first year in a school, they are on step zero, and their fourth year, they are on step three. The higher the step, the higher the salary. In our school, the highest step is 16. In every step, there are lanes for the amount of graduate credits that teachers have had since attaining their bachelors degrees. In the schools where I've worked, it has gone by increments of 15. For example, if someone is on step four, there would be lane for Step 4 + 0 credits, Step 4 + 15 credits, all the way up to Step 4 with a Masters + 45 credits. The farther a teacher is along on lanes, the more they get paid within that step. So in other words, a teacher who is just out of college with no graduate credits might get paid something like $28,000, and a teacher who is at the highest step with a Masters + 45 credits might get paid something like $56,000.

My idea is to start with this schedule, but to allow a principal to move teachers up an down the steps. So if a school got a great new teacher, at the end of a year, the principal would be able to move her from step one all the way to step five, six or even higher if he wanted to. No teacher would object to being moved up, but many would object to being moved down, and I would also allow principals to do that. In those cases, I would set up an appeal process with a panel consisting of something like one school board member, one teacher, and one respected citizen from the community--perhaps a parent or a retired teacher. Both the teacher who had been moved down and the principal could bring witnesses and give evidence, but there would be no lawyers allowed.

Although having graduate credits or a Master's degree doesn't necessarily make one a better teacher than one who doesn't, there is value in earning them, so I would continue to have lanes within the steps in order to encourage continuing education.

In most places, when cuts need to made, teachers are laid off strictly by seniority. The least senior teachers get cut. Since, in my system, the people who the principal believed were the best teachers would be the highest on salary schedule, I would use a system similar to this. But rather than using strict seniority, teachers would be laid off according to is lowest on the salary schedule in the departments that are being cut. As things are now, a teacher in an area being cut, social studies for example, can "bump" a teacher with less seniority in a different area, like math, that isn't being cut. I would allow the principal to use his or her discretion to do this type of thing by having a teacher that is higher on the salary schedule bump one who is lower. Obviously, if a principal did this, it should be because the principal believed the "bumping" teacher was better.

One problem with my idea, that was pointed out when I originally posted this idea, is that I am looking at this from the point of view of a teacher who works in a relatively small school. In large schools principals might not know all their teachers very will. So let me amend my plan this way: the decisions I'm talking about should be made by someone in a managerial position.

I know there are teachers who think I am nuts on this because they have lousy principals. I'm afraid that is true a lot more often than it should be in America. As it is now, rather than principals and other administrators coming from the body of teachers who do the best jobs, as I think they should, they come from the body of teachers who most want to make more money. It's not that wanting to earn more money necessarily makes one a bad teacher, but it sure doesn't necessarily mean he's a good one. If we are ever going to give principals the power I'm talking about, that is a system that needs to change.

Vouchers

2009-03-16T15:06:00.000-07:00

I checked out Joanne Jacobs site recently and found she had a couple of pieces dealing with vouchers. In the first one that I read I learned that Congress had killed a voucher program in Washington, D.C..

Democrats in Congress just killed an experiment that gives 1,700 poor Washington kids school vouchers. They even refused to grandfather in the kids already in the program, so those children will be ripped away from their mentors and friends.

Now, I have no first hand experience with the D.C. school system, so if I am off base on this, I hope someone will shoot me down. But my understanding is that the D.C. school system is pretty bad. When I say that, I have no idea how good or bad the teachers and administrators are, and this is certainly not meant as an indictment of them. My assumption is that they are dealing with a lot of kids from rough neighborhoods with a lot of social problems.

I am no fan of vouchers, but if a school system is really bad, I think they are appropriate. I'm convinced that the most common cause of a bad school is not bad teaching or bad administration, but a high number of kids in the classrooms who can ruin learning for those kids who do want an education. I don't know how any union, any political party, or anyone who cares about education can in good conscience argue that kids who want an education should be stuck in those classrooms.

I believe that the best solution would be for the teacher to be given the power to remove those kids who ruin the educational environment, but neither Arne Duncan or Barack Obama have called me lately, so I don't expect my solution to be enacted anytime soon. That being the case, having vouchers is one way that students who want to learn can move into decent educational environments.

The second piece I saw on Joanne's blog promoted a full-scale voucher program for the United States. That I completely disagree with. While enough bad students can ruin an educational environment, good students are essential for it. Remove enough good students from a classroom, and a great learning environment can become a mediocre one. A full-scale voucher system would threaten to do this to public school classrooms across our nation.

The good thing about vouchers is that it allows kids with parents who care about their kids' education to move their kids to a place where they can learn. The big problem with that is that there are other kids who care about their education or have the potential to care with parents who don't give a rip. Those parent are probably not going to bother with vouchers. Get those kids together with good students, and they might be wonderful students themselves. Remove the good students, and their situation becomes hopeless. In a public school system that is already hopeless, that's acceptable. In any other situation it's not.

There's no joy in Mudville!

2009-03-15T03:23:00.000-07:00

This is a painful one, but I promised to keep people informed. The Warriors went down to the Breck Mustangs yesterday 7-3. The score is somewhat misleading, however, because we outshot the Mustangs 36-24, and their last two goals were empty net goals after we had pulled our goalie in an effort to tie the game. Our kids really were Warriors right up until the final buzzer, and we couldn't be prouder of them. Somebody's gotta win; somebody's gotta lose.

State Championship game tomorrow!

2009-03-13T15:22:00.000-07:00

The Warroad Warriors knocked off St. Cloud Cathedral 5-3 in a barnburner today to avenge an earlier loss and advance to the State Class A Championship game tomorrow. We will be facing the Breck Mustangs, a powerful private school from the Twin Cities who looked like a machine in throttling the number one cede and previously unbeaten Little Falls Flyers 6-1. Why can't it ever be easy?

Why won't Obama's stimulus plan work?

2009-03-13T06:10:00.000-07:00

Joanne Jacobs had a post yesterday that brought to mind a subject I've been meaning to address for a while now. I threw a comment in on her post, but I wanted to address it on my own blog, too.

I teach Economics as an elective for high school juniors and seniors, but the subject is so complicated that I consider myself anything but an expert on it. I also teach American History, and we recently finished up on the Great Depression and started on World War II. We spent $320 billion dollars during the war, which might seem like small potatoes now, but at that time it was twice the amount we had spent during our entire history up to that time. I have always understood that World War II is what got us out of the Great Depression because of the massive government spending that was required. That is what I have always taught, and I believe that is standard across the nation.

When I first heard about President Obama's plan for an $800 billion stimulus package for what is being called the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, I was very concerned about its effect on our already huge federal deficits and national debt, but the logic made sense to me. If it was massive government spending that got us out of the Great Depression, wouldn't massive government spending be a reasonable thing to do to deal with our situation today?

But when I've watched the talking heads on TV news shows, I've never really seen that discussed. I've seen several analysts say that the stimulus is terrible and that it will never work, but none of them have ever explained why the connection that I see between the way World War II got us out of the Great Depression and our situation today isn't there. I've never heard anyone say, "Look, the spending for World War II got us out of the Depression because....., but the spending Obama is proposing won't get us out of this mess because......"

If any of you are more expert on the subject of economics than I am--and that includes a lot of people--I would love to learn your thoughts on this.

The Warriors move on to the semis

2009-03-12T05:41:00.000-07:00

The Warroad Warriors defeated the Hutchinson Tigers 7-1 yesterday in a Minnesota Class A match-up. We have the day off today while the AA schools have their quarterfinal games, then tomorrow we meet St. Cloud Cathedral in the semi-finals. St. Cloud Cathedral was one of the two teams who beat us during the regular season, but it was a great game, and we're looking for another one tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Barack Obama and Colin Powell on education

2009-03-11T04:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, President Obama gave a major speech on education policy. So far, I like him a lot. Who knows whether or not he will have a successful presidency, but he seems to have the potential for greatness. His plan to improve education in America, however, does not inspire me.

It's not that I'm disappointed by the things Obama is proposing; it's exactly what I would expect from a good politician who does not really understand what happens in a classroom. It's not that I think the things he is proposing are necessarily bad things. I just don't think any of them are going to significantly improve education in America.

President Obama is endorsing merit pay, that's not a bad thing, but I think it is greatly overrated by its proponents. It might help a little, and I am all for doing whatever it takes to make sure we keep our best teachers, regardless of seniority, and get rid of our worst ones. There are some occupations that react more to pay than others, however. It is all important to many people in sales and business, but teachers react to it less than almost anyone. Speaking for myself, I do care what I get paid, but the time and effort I put into my job are not based on it at all.

America's teachers are often portrayed by our media and elites as being incompetent. This is unfair. There are some lousy teachers out there--no one can deny that--and we should get rid of them. But much of the so-called "bad teaching" is being done by teachers who have been put into impossible classroom situations. Once in a blue moon you might find an incredible teacher who can go into one of those classrooms and turn things around. Those teachers, however, are very rare. If anyone thinks that enough of them can be found to turn around those impossible classroom situations in large cities throughout the nation, they are dreaming. Something has to be done about those classroom situations, and Obama's policies don't.

Much is being made of President Obama's endorsement of charter schools. Once again, some good might come of that. There are some good charter schools, and some good ideas have come from them. The fact is, however, that the great majority of kids in our country attend public schools, and that is not going to change in the foreseeable future. The greatest benefit that I can see from charter schools is that is allows parents who care about education to move their kids into classrooms with other kids whose parents also care about education. That does absolutely nothing for the kids who are left behind, however, and it might make their situation even worse.

On the same day that President Obama gave his education speech, CNN ran an interview with Colin Powell. The former general and secretary of state addressed the real problems in American education by directing his remarks to students and parents. He said American students need to start attending classes regularly, listen to their teachers, mind their manners, and perform. He basically told parents that they need to stop accepting their kids' excuses and demand that they work hard in school. Barack Obama has said things like this in the past, and it is music to any teacher's ears.

As wonderful as it is to hear words like these from prominent people in our country, it won't do very much unless it is somehow converted into policy. That means that teachers and schools have to be able to demand that students behavior and effort are in line with Colin Powell's words. And it's not just a matter of saying, "We demand it!" or "We have high expectations for you!" It's wonderful for a president and a former secretary of state to urge students to toe the line, but what if they don't? Are we going to do anything about it? Because if we don't, education in America will never improve very much.

In the late 1960s the Supreme Court ruled that education is a property right that cannot be taken away from students without due process of law. In the early 1970s they ruled that a school official could be sued if some judge decided that his attempt at discipline deprived a student of that right, regardless of how obnoxious the student's behavior was. That began a deterioration in the behavior of students in public schools, and test scores have remained flat ever since, despite all of the "innovative" programs that have been tried. That is the problem, and that is what needs to be addressed.

So to policy makers, I would say this. If you want to make a little bit of difference, and if you want to look like you're doing something, go ahead--throw in your merit pay, make the school day longer, make the school year longer, and encourage more charter schools and other kinds of choice. None of that will make a very big difference, but you'll look like a real reformer, and you can pretend you're doing something significant. But if you really want to improve education in America, you'll have to do something so that those "high expectations" you want schools and teachers to have will be something more than just words.

Back to the state tournament!

2009-03-06T02:58:00.000-08:00

Warroad 3 Thief River Falls 2. We scored the winner with 1:53 left in the game, in what was obviously a nail-biter. I've got an idea or two for other posts, but I won't be getting to them over the weekend. I'm headed off this morning for my father-in-laws visitation and memorial service, then we'll drive back here on Sunday, then I'll be off with the team for the Twin Cities again on Monday. I think we've got a legitimate shot at winning the tournament, but we are definitely not the favorite, and it's the strongest Class A field I've ever seen. My gray hair just keeps getting grayer.

Heaven has gained another good carpenter

2009-03-01T14:04:00.000-08:00

Over a year ago, I wrote a post about the sudden illness of my father-in-law, John Engberg. My wife and I were called to come down to the Twin Cities for what we believed were going to be his very last days, and we both brought clothes for the funeral. But Big John, never one to go down easy, made an amazing comeback, and I was able to bring my suit back unworn. This morning at 11:30, John finally succumbed to the cancer that he had been battling for the last year.

My wife had been able to spend this last weekend with him, and had just arrived back in Warroad fifteen minutes before we got the word that John had passed away. Although he was clearly fading, my wife says he continued to pepper her with questions about our high school hockey team. In fact, his last words to me when I talked to him on the phone a week ago were, "Bring home a winner!" Although it was wrenching to see the pain and discomfort he had to go through during the last year, I can only be grateful for the extra time we had with him. I said this in my original post and I will say it again: John Engberg is the most thoroughly decent man I've ever known. He has been a role model for me ever since I met him 37 years ago. I hope that I can be half the man that he was.

Back in the section finals

2009-03-01T03:08:00.000-08:00

This morning I am entering my most nervous week of the year. On Thursday our high school hockey team beat Kittson County Central 11-0, and then last night we beat Crookston 9-1 to earn a birth in the Section 8A Championship game. On Monday night Thief River Falls and Bemidji will play to determine who our opponent will be. Whoever wins the section championship will enter the Minnesota State Hockey Tournament in St. Paul the following week.

This will be the thirteenth section final that I've been a part of, but I didn't get to my first one until my twentieth year of coaching. I was also involved in two as a player in the late 1960s. The anxiety going into this game is like nothing else I've ever experienced. Win, and you've earned a week in St. Paul, and your season is considered at least somewhat of a success. Lose, and you're done. I'll let you know on Friday how we came out.

Frustration: Teachers, non-teachers & education policy

2009-02-27T03:12:00.000-08:00

I suspect that if any "educational elites" ever read any of my stuff, they quickly come to the conclusion that I am an educational Neanderthal. They probably picture me as a character from one of the Geico cavemen commercials. But I wonder if they have any idea how many of us Neanderthals there are. After one of my recent posts, Denine left the following comment:

As a first year teacher, I often feel like I am the only one who sees the "reality" in public education. I read your blog and realize that I am not alone.

The most gratifying thing from the writing I've done, whether it's in this blog or in the book I wrote, has been getting comments like that. I can't count the number of times that teachers approached me personally or wrote me letters telling me something to the effect that they felt like they could have written the book I wrote because it expressed exactly what they had been thinking. When I heard things like that, I felt like I had succeeded in what I was trying to do.

There are a lot of teachers who agree that one of the biggest problems in American education is that there are a lot of kids who don't try very hard, and that there are a lot of forces in our society that push them in that direction. There are a lot of teachers who agree about the disastrous effects that disruptive and apathetic students have on other kids stuck in classes with them. There are a lot of teachers who are frustrated because they lack the power to do anything meaningful to deal with these problems and they are expected to provide quality educational opportunities to all their kids despite them. I believe that unless something is done about these problems, education--at least in public schools--will never improve significantly no matter what other nifty reforms are imposed upon us. I've found that there are a lot of teacher who feel the same way.

I don't mean to speak for Denine, but I think she was expressing that sentiment when she also said this:

"I feel like I am at a total loss when it comes to solutions for so many of the problems in public education. I feel like most of my fellow teachers have given up and just accept things as they are. They all just tell me that I will do the same thing, too, in a few years when I realize that things are not going to change."

In a couple of posts in the past, I have expressed my frustration about discussing educational issues with non-teachers. Some non-teachers get offended by this, but I'm really not trying to give offense. I'm not saying that non-teachers have no right to an opinion on educational matters, and I'm not even saying that because they have never taught in a classroom that their opinions automatically have less validity than teachers. In fact, on some educational issues, they might even have more. Nevertheless, the experience of being in a classroom day after day does matter. It does give one a perspective on some things in education that you can't possibly have without it. Why does it seem like that perspective is ignored?

What is so frustrating about being in education, especially with the media and the elites of the nation constantly harping about how poor a job we're doing, is that policy is made by people who do not live their lives by teaching in classrooms. Policy is made by politicians, superintendents, and the like, and they seem to be most influenced by journalists, business leaders, high-brows from universities, and others who know nothing about what day to day life in a K-12 classroom is actually like. Yes, I know, someone might argue that our unions are very involved in making policy, but I'm not sure when the last time was that most of those union leaders were actually in the trenches of the classroom. I do know that our unions have failed miserably to express the concerns that I'm talking about.

This morning as I was watching CNN, a little item flashed across their screens saying that the new Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, has announced that he believes we need to have a longer school year. Now, I am not against that. Heck, it would probably mean that I'd make more money. But let's face it, the biggest concerns about education in America have to do with our lowest achievers, and any teacher can tell you that the overwhelming majority of our low achievers don't try very hard. If you are going to do anything meaningful about that, the first thing that must be addressed is their lack of effort. Any teacher could also tell you that adding days to our school year will do absolutely nothing about that. But then, Arne Duncan was never a teacher.

Last week I posted about the effort in the Minnesota State Legislature to pass a law forcing kids to stay in school until they are 18-years-old. Any high school teacher I know could tell you that forcing every kid to stay in school is a bad idea. But the chief sponsor of the bill, Rep. Carlos Mariani, thinks it is a great idea. Surprise, surprise, Rep. Mariani is not a teacher. His former occupation before becoming a state legislator in 1990 is listed as consultant--whatever that means! The superintendent of the St. Paul schools, however, thinks Mariani has a swell idea. She made this wonderful sounding and incredibly naive statement about it: "When kids drop out, everyone loses." Anyone who has ever taught in a high school classroom can tell you how wrong that statement is, but then Ms. Carstarphan has never been a teacher. Her career before becoming the head of the St. Paul schools: a photographer and then a wiz-bang administrator.

I wish I had an answer for what to do about this, but I'm afraid I don't. All I can do, I guess, is to keep on blogging, and hope that others who've had similar experiences to mine do the same. But for those of you who are not teachers, I hope you'll have some patience with people like me when I complain about non-teachers and educational policy. I'm sure teachers aren't completely alone in this respect, but I don't know how many other people have occupations where the key decisions for them are consistently made by people who seem to have no idea what they are doing.

A good name for a bad concept

2009-02-24T03:28:00.000-08:00

Eduwonk is having a contest for re-naming "No Child Left Behind." With all due respect, I disagree with the idea of changing the name of this program. The name is perfectly appropriate; it is the concept that is flawed.

I should point out that I am looking at this from a high school teacher's point of view, and maybe an elementary teacher would see it differently. But the name "No Child Left Behind" implies that education is something that is done "to" or "for" somebody. As a person who deals with 15-18-year-olds, I can tell you that I can't educate anyone. I can't force any of them to come along with me. I can make it possible for every one of my students to be successful (and that ain't easy!), I can motivate, and I can make my classes as interesting as I possibly can. But I can't force my kids to become educated. It doesn't matter how hard I work at it, if my students are going to be educated, they are going to have to have some desire to do that, and they are going to have to do most of the work themselves. I can do everything in my power to give all of my students the opportunity to be educated, but I'm sorry--I can't ram it down their throats. "No Child Left Behind," just as the name says, is based on the idea that I can. And that's why the program is fatally flawed.

If we want reform that will improve education in America in a meaningful way, it needs to be based on the idea that we will provide the opportunity for a quality education for every child. That includes providing the best possible opportunities for kids with various learning disabilities. However, implicit in that concept is the acknowledgement that there will be kids who will turn their backs on education. Certainly we should try to motivate and encourage kids to take advantage of the opportunity, but eventually we must accept their decisions. If a student won't try or won't behave appropriately, that student should be removed from the educational setting or at least separated from those who do want to be educated.

I know I sound like a broken record when I keep saying this, but kids affect other kids in the classroom. When we say that we will leave no child behind, we are making sure that we will leave many behind that don't have to be. When we say that we will educate every kid whether they like it or not, and we will force them to stay in their classrooms no matter what they do or don't do, we are condemning countless kids who have wonderful possibilities to be stuck in those classrooms with them. For too many that means an inferior education or no education at all.

Is this somebody's idea of reform?

2009-02-21T14:21:00.000-08:00

If you ever say "reform" or "high expectations" to a teacher, and the teacher turns and runs the other way, please excuse him. "Reform" and "high expectations" might sound good to the average layman, but to someone who actually has to teach classes, they often mean that the idiots are back at it again. As I perused the Minneapolis Star/Tribune the other day, I saw that certain reformers in the Minnesota State Legislature are back at it again. Their idea to improve education in our state: force all kids to stay in school until they are at least 18-years-old. It's enough to make a grown man cry.

The subtitle to this article reads, "Proponents say it would signal the state's strong educational expectations." Puh-lease!!! Any classroom teacher can tell you that "high expectations" does not equal kids simply being in school. High expectations should mean that the kids who are in school perform at a reasonable level. Forcing sixteen and seventeen-year-olds who don't want to be there to be in school ends up lowering expectations, not raising them.

A case that illustrates the futility for forcing kids who have no interest in education to stay in school involves a student of ours from a few years ago who got into trouble with the law. The judge in his case made it a condition of his probation that he be in school. Well, the kid came to school alright, but instead of going to class, he just wandered around the hallways. Our principal brought him into his office and asked him, "Aren't you concerned about what this means for your probation?" The kid's answer: "The judge just told me I had to be in school; he didn't say I had to go to class."

I'm sure the judge in that case was well-meaning; he just didn't know any better. A superintendent of schools, however, should. Apparently St. Paul's superintendent of schools, Meria Carstarphen, doesn't. She made a statement for the Star/Tribune article that is so wrong that I have to wonder if she's ever actually been in a high school classroom. She said, "When kids drop out everyone loses."

Nothing could be further from the truth. Students affect other students, and anybody involved in education should understand that. In the great majority of cases, when a student drops out, many of that student's former classmates gain, and some of them might gain greatly. It is depressing that someone with the power of a big city superintendent is ignorant of that.

Every year, my American History classes get better as the year goes along because we get rid of some malcontents. Most of ours end up going to our ALC, but some do actually drop out. Good riddance! The kids that leave have no desire to learn anything, they make no effort, they are often disruptive, and they drag everybody down. There is no question that the effect of their leaving on the education that takes place in my classes is positive.

If someone wants to have a program to emphasize the importance of education to troubled kids, I would be all for it as long as that program emphasized to those kids that they have to perform--they have to be willing to behave, and they have to be willing to try. If someone wants to start a program to encourage kids who have dropped out to decide for themselves to come back to school and take their education seriously, I would be all for it. That would actually make sense.

Dropping out is not a good thing, but it is a symptom and not a cause of educational problems. I'm sorry that dropouts have gotten lost somewhere along the way, but the St. Paul superintendent has it backwards--if we force kids who have no desire to learn to stay in school, everybody will lose.

I'm still here!

2009-02-20T14:26:00.000-08:00

My blogging buddy, Mark Roulo, sent me an email a week ago to make sure I hadn't fallen off the face of the earth. It's nice to be missed by somebody, and I've felt guilty about being away for so long. But blogging takes mental energy, and I just haven't had enough left over to do this lately. As I told Mark, I set the blogging aside because I have been so involved in my two jobs--teaching and coaching hockey.

Even though I've done it for 33 of my 34 years in education, I guess I forgot how demanding coaching is on one's time and attention. After taking a year off, I came back into coaching last year and although I worked with the varsity goaltenders, my main responsibility was handling the junior varsity team. Hockey is huge in northern Minnesota, but there is far less pressure on JV than there is on varsity teams, so when it comes to enjoyment vs. pressure, it was one of the most enjoyable years in coaching I've ever had. This year I was moved to varsity assistant, and our team is very good. As a result, the pressure has increased, and the amount of energy demanded from me has gone up with it. I thought I'd be able to hang in there with the blogging through the season, but I underestimated how hard that would be.

Our team finished it's regular season on Tuesday with a record of 23-2. We begin our section playoffs next Thursday, and we have to win three games to make it into the state tournament, which is our main goal every year. Right now, it appears that we have a legitimate chance to not only make it into the state tournament, but to win our state championship. There is the very real possibility, however, that we will get knocked off in our section tournament, and if that happens, it will be hard to view our season as a success, regardless of our impressive record. That is pressure! I'd love to tell you that I handle pressure marvelously and that I will be calm, cool, and collected throughout the upcoming ordeal, but the truth of the matter is that at times like these I remind myself a lot of Barney Fife. As I told Mark, at least I'll be able to put my Metamucil away for the next couple of weeks.

I'm posting this because we have a nine-day break between our last regular season game and our playoffs, so the head coach has given the kids (and me) a rare weekend off. I might post again soon because we only have school two days next week. We've got Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off because our girls' hockey team made it into their state tournament. You think that doesn't add a little to the pressure? In any case, don't worry about me. I'm still up here in the frozen tundra of Warroad, and hopefully I'll be able to get back into blogging when our season is over.

Too much time covering my backside!

2008-12-14T13:29:00.000-08:00

I am a little frustrated. Our team took off from school after third hour on Friday for a hockey trip, and after two games, we traveled 170 miles in a blizzard to make it back home last night. After church, I headed up to the school this morning to catch up, but I had a great substitute so I knew that wouldn't take very long. I ended up spending a lot more time at the school than I really wanted to, however. The reason: I had to spend so much time covering my backside. And why do I have to cover my backside? Because I have a number of kids who are failing and a number more who are close to it, and I know that if any of those kids fail or if any of them become ineligible to play a sport, and I haven't kept the parent informed every step of the way, fingers are going to end up being pointed at me. The student's failure will become my failure.

I want to make it clear that our community has a lot of kids who do well, and I have my share of them. I just wish I could spend more time on them. The problem is that we also have too many kids whose concern and effort in school is mediocre to miserable. I have set my classes up in such a way so that if kids consistently do the things they are capable of doing, they are going to have a very good chance of earning at least a B. If they get a little lazy for any length of time, however, they're going to be in danger of failing, and if they're in a sport, there's a fair chance they'll find themselves on our ineligibility list. The benefit of doing things this way is that some kids who have a tendency to get lazy get shocked into performing as the year goes on. Last year, twenty-five out of eighty sophomores in my American History classes failed the first quarter, but only a handful failed the last one.

Making sure that every parent of every potential failing student is informed every step of the way is a major headache. When a student falls into failing territory, I have to make sure I immediately inform the parent. If the kid moves into D territory for awhile, then falls back into F-land, I have to notify the parent again. Likewise, if I put a student's name on our ineligibility list for extra-curricular activities, I have to inform the parent, and if he or she gets off and then has to go back on, once again, I have to re-notify the parent. In our second and fourth marking periods, this gets quite confusing because it's possible for a student to be failing the marking period, but not the semester and vice-versa. And you just know that, despite the fact that only a few of the parents I send reports to ever respond, if I forget to inform just one, that will be the parent who will want to make an issue of it.

I am not against trying to keep parents informed, but there has been more and more emphasis placed on doing this. Along with this has come the very clear message to the teacher that you'd better not fail kids if their parents haven't been fully informed. The obvious solution for teachers is to not fail students unless they are the absolute bottom of the bottom-feeders. Unfortunately, a lot of teachers choose to take this approach. This is just one example of the many things that have been done during the last thirty or forty years to discourage teachers from imposing any consequences on any students.

There are those who believe that the key to getting better effort from American students is to get teachers to have more creative lesson plans. I'm all for creative lesson plans, and that sounds so wonderful, but I don't think that's the answer. I have rarely been able to wow any of my non-performers with any of my lesson plans, no matter what I've tried, although I have been able to impress many of my kids who were already trying. I think it's much more important that there be meaningful consequences for those who don't perform. The more difficult we make it for teachers to impose those consequences, the less likely it is that they will.

High school reform? Forget the experts!

2008-12-07T03:38:00.000-08:00

I was browsing through the blogosphere, and I came upon a U.S. News and World Report piece titled "The Future of High School Reform." The subtitle to the article read, "Education experts voice their ideas at U.S. News's education summit." I thought, "Hey, that looks interesting!" So I read the entire article...And didn't find one worthwhile thing.

Oh, the wizards in the discussion talked about "one-size fits all," standards, charter schools, the need for better teachers, and a lot of pie-in-the-sky theory, but there was not one thing that any of them said that indicated to me that any of them had any idea about what the real problems are in American education. When talking about low achievement, not one word about discipline and not one word about student effort. Anyone who has spent any time in a classroom knows that those are the things that matter more than anything else, but not one word about them. NOT ONE! I'd love to give you a quote from the article, but there wasn't anything worth quoting. How a group of people who are supposedly so knowledgeable about a subject that I am so interested in could manage to bore me the way they did is amazing. What is depressing is that these are the people who public officials turn to when making policy. Honestly, I don't think they have a clue.

There was one idea I ran into in my browsing that was at least worth discussing, and that came in this seemingly off-hand remark by Joanne Jacobs: I think public schools can enforce values too. Let kids who don’t want to behave go to the Socialization Center, where they can watch movies and play video games to prepare for a lifetime of unemployment. Those who wish to learn can attend safe, orderly schools devoted to that purpose. Most kids don’t want to be losers. They’d choose a real school, if one was available.

I like the concept of separating the wheat from the chaff, but I'm afraid that among some groups of kids, Joanne is overly optimistic about how few kids would choose to go off to the "Socialization Center."

Our hockey season began on November 17th, and I am reminded that if we really want to improve high school education in America, all we have to do is look at high school athletics. That is where the effort to achieve excellence takes place in American education. There are three major differences between high school athletics and the classroom:

1. The kids who take part in athletics choose to be there.
2. No one has "the right" to be on a team. If a player refuses to conform, the coach can dismiss them. (Since our players know this is the case, we rarely have to do it. We have dismissed a total of two players in the twenty years I've been at Warroad.)
3. Coaches can easily be fired if the administration is unhappy with them.

I am not saying that we have to run our classrooms exactly like our athletic teams, but I truly believe that anything we need to improve high school education in America is contained in the three points above.

Please forgive my lack of production

2008-12-07T03:30:00.000-08:00

I appreciate the people who check in on my blog from time to time, and I really appreciate those who make comments. You are the people who make this fun. I always feel guilty when my production slows down, because I know that going too long without posting risks losing people. My production has slowed down lately, and the reason for that is hockey season has begun. The beginning of the season is always the toughest with long practices and lots of evaluating. This is basically an opinion blog, so I usually need to be fired up about something to post. Early in the hockey season, I'm so mentally and physically tired when I get home from practice that kicking back with one of my John Sandford or Robert Parker novels sounds a lot better than reading and writing about education issues. I've been trying to post something once a week, but even that has been difficult. Hopefully, by about the first of the new year I'll be able to get more into this again. Until then, I hope you'll bear with me.

Future plans

2008-11-27T05:12:00.000-08:00

A number of posts ago, Mrs. C. asked me when I was going to retire. Well, she asked for it, so she's going to get it.

I have been paying into Minnesota's TRA for more than 34 years now. This state has a rule of 90, so as of last December, I could have hung up the chalk and begun collecting full retirement benefits. The Warroad School District, however has a rather attractive twenty year package, and since I spent my first fifteen years in a different district, last year was only my nineteenth here. This is my twentieth. So that must mean that I'll be hanging it up at the end of this school year, right? Well, not so fast.

My main problem is that I have few hobbies. Warroad is the hunting and fishing capital of the world, but I don't do either of those things. I used to play golf, but I haven't done that in four years. I am a reader, but I don't want to read all day; I am a blogger, but that's not something I want to spend much more time on than I am now; I love sports, but I have trouble sitting still for a full game unless I'm involved in some way.

In fact, my favorite hobby has probably been school. I live one block from the high school, and I've got keys to everything, so whenever I get a little bored, I walk up to the school and start putzing around. The other hobbies that I have--a lot of the reading I do, the blogging--are also related to school. I know people who have retired and loved it, but I've also known people who have been bored stiff. I don't wish to join them. The bottom line is that teaching and coaching have been my life. I've loved doing them, and I don't know what I'd do without them.

Warroad was a great place for my wife and me to bring our kids when they were teenagers, but those days are long gone. Our oldest son lives in the Twin Cities which is six-and-a-half hours away, our youngest lives in Orlando, Florida, and our middle son lives with his wife in Moline, Illinois, and they are at the stage where they are looking to start a family. We would like to be able to see our kids a lot more often than we can now.

After the new year roles around, and as our hockey season begins to wind down, I will begin to look for social studies teaching jobs in the Iowa/Illinois area. I hope you won't think I'm a hypocrite when I say that I would be more than happy to accept a job in a private school--maybe a small Catholic school. Since I would be able to collect my TRA, I wouldn't need a huge salary. It's not that I'm giving up on public schools, but after my experience of moving from Mt. Iron to Warroad, I know how hard it can be to be a first-year teacher in a public school--establishing discipline, establishing a reputation, etc. It ain't easy! If I was in my thirties, that would be one thing, but I'm 57, so I really don't want to go through that again. Teaching at a private school, where they don't have to put up with some of the behaviors that public schools do, sounds pretty good.

As good as that sounds to me, I am painfully aware that schools probably won't be falling all over themselves in competition to hire a 58-year-old social studies guy. That leads to option number two. Minnesota now allows a teacher to collect TRA and earn up to $40 thousand teaching in the state. That means that if my school district was willing to hire me as a four-sevenths teacher, I could teach two less classes, have two fewer preps, and earn more money. That is a very attractive option. In my last post I did a little whining about my workload this year. I think it would be wonderful to teach four hours a day. What a great job a person would be able to do by focusing on fewer classes and fewer kids! This would also enable me to stay in hockey coaching, which would also be a lot more fun because of the lighter teaching load. Since my first year or two in Warroad, I have always felt valued here, and I would not have to adjust to new kids, a new community, new classes, and a new school.

The problem with this plan is that it would have to work out for my school. That is something I will have to talk to my principal and superintendent about. If it's something that can't be worked out, that leads to option number three. I'll just keep doing what I'm doing. I guess I can live with that one, too.

Does anyone have cheese to go with my whine?

2008-11-23T02:47:00.000-08:00

Prepare to listen to a teacher whine.

I know that there are some teachers who don't work very hard. There are some teachers who never have, but there are others who have burned out, and there is a reason for that. Teachers who want to do a good job sometimes get so much thrown at them that it's tough to keep the fire burning.

I began my teaching career in Mt. Iron, Minnesota, and that school district did it right--at least for high school teachers. I had two classes to prepare for--American History and World History, I had two prep periods (meaning that I had two free periods during the day to prepare for classes, correct papers, etc.), and my classes never contained more than 25 kids. I spent a good deal of time at my job, worked hard, and I had a chance to try to be creative, but I wasn't overwhelmed.

Then I moved to Warroad. Before I came here, they didn't have two prep periods, but there had been an understanding that each teacher would have one study hall in addition to their one prep period. Since one generally doesn't have to "teach" during a study hall, this would enable the teacher to do things like correct papers during that time. Four years before I came here a new high school had been built, and the rooms were designed to handle 25 kids in a class.

Somewhere along the line, the study hall understanding went by the wayside. Then there was an understanding that teachers who taught advanced placement classes would have a second prep period for that. Then we started making cuts. That one also went by the wayside, replaced by an understanding that all advanced placement teachers would have a study hall. Guess what happened to that one? Now I have four different classes to prepare for, including an advanced placement class; I have one prep period and no study hall, and I began the year 33, 32, and 31 kids in my regular American History classes so that I am literally tripping over people as I walk through the aisles.

I can do this. Yes, I can do this. I've had to get to school about an hour and a half before classes start, come back every night for about an hour, and spend much of my weekends there, but I can get everything done. The problem is that I feel like Crabby Crabberton so much of the time, and I don't like myself when I feel like that. Some kid comes in and "interrupts" me early in the morning to make up a test while I'm scrambling to stay caught up, and I feel like I'm ready to bite his head off. A parent calls during my cherished prep period to discuss their child, and I feel resentment that they can be "so stupid" as to take me away from what I'm doing. I almost always restrain myself from reacting the way I feel like reacting in those situations, but as I said, I don't like myself very much when I feel that way. But it's tough not to.

Believe it or not, the purpose of this is not to enlist anyone's sympathy. I can read the minds of some who might be reading this (Three months off in the summer!). There are two points, however, that I do want to make. First of all, when school districts decide that there are no consequences to increasing the workloads of teachers, they are wrong. There are things that I would like to do that I can't do. I always feel guilty that I don't have my students write more, but nothing takes more time to evaluate, and when I'm already feeling overwhelmed, there is no way that I'm going to have students doing any more of that than they already are. I would also like to be able to do more to reach out to some of my students who aren't doing well, but there is just no time. There is no question that I could be a better teacher if I didn't have so many classes, and so many preps, and so many kids, and so little in-school time to prepare.

My other point is that while many people have justifiable criticisms of teachers' unions and their insistence that things be written into contracts, there is a reason that teachers turn to them. We do have a union in Warroad, but it is a rather "nice" union, so we have tended to trust our school board and administrators when it came to those "understandings." Besides those "understanding" that have gone by the wayside, in the round of negotiations that were completed last year, teachers in our district received a one-percent raise while our administrators, who negotiated after us, received several times that. Our being nice and our being trusting have gotten us where we are, and besides making us feel like a bunch of saps, I'm not so sure that it's been good for the education that is taking place in our school.

Will a bad economy be good for education?

2008-11-15T14:25:00.000-08:00

I have never in my lifetime been as worried about the economy as I am now. I've never seen anything like the financial crisis our nation has run into, and it sounds like there is no question we are in a recession. I wonder just how bad it's going to get. Our unemployment rate is headed toward eight percent, and I'm wondering just how high it will go. I believe it hit 11.3 percent in the early 1980s, and I wonder if we're going to top that. During my lifetime, whenever we've had a recession we've gotten out of it through increased deficit spending by our federal government. But our federal deficit was at $400 billion per year before things got really bad--before the $700 billion bailout of our financial institutions, and before talk of a bailout for the automobile industry, and before unemployment started increasing significantly, which of course will cause federal revenues to decrease and spending to increase even more. I'm wondering just how high our deficit can go. Is there any limit to what we can borrow in a year before our whole house of cards comes tumbling down? It looks like we're about to find out. It really scares me. There might, however, be at least one small silver lining inside this very black cloud. It might be good for education.

If you are wondering what the heck I'm talking about, let me explain. I began my teaching career in Mt. Iron which is in the middle of the Iron Range in Minnesota. At that time, the taconite industry was booming, and it continued to boom for the first few years that I worked there. Kids were graduating from high school, and going right to work in the taconite plants or in construction and making very good money. I remember asking one mediocre student, who I thought had some talent, why he didn't try harder. He turned to me and said, "Why should I? In six months I'll be making more money than you are."

About two years after this incident, the floor fell out from under the taconite industry, and Minnesota's Iron Range has never been the same. Minntac, the plant in Mt. Iron cut their workforce of 4,000 down to 1,500. No longer were high school students bragging to their high school teachers that they'd soon be making more money than they were. In fact, there seemed to be a definite improvement in overall effort and performance of our student body. With so few jobs available, and so much unemployment, it was clear to a lot of our kids that if they ever wanted to be able to make a decent living, education was going to matter. No longer could they count on getting out of high school, going right to work in the taconite plant and making good money.

I must confess that I never grasped the full effect of this until I moved here to Warroad in 1989. After one year in Warroad, it was clear to me that I would have to make adjustments because the effort and performance of the students here was so much worse than what I had gotten accustomed to during my last few years on the Iron Range. The factories in this area are non-union, so they don't pay nearly as well as the plants on the Iron Range did, but there has been full employment during the entire time I've lived here. Kids have always assumed there would be jobs waiting for them once they got out of high school no matter how poorly they've performed.

There is another problem for education, at least at the high school level, that goes hand in hand with the full employment this area has had since I've moved here. That is the large number of high school students who work part-time jobs--sometimes more than one--during the school year. I don't know how many times I've had students tell me that they couldn't do a homework assignment because they had to work.

The effects of our faltering economy haven't really hit this area, yet, but I strongly suspect they will. My understanding is that the orders for Marvin Windows, the major employer in our area, are okay up until about the new year, but then they fall off a cliff. Marvin Windows has always handled slow times by having their employees work 32 hour instead of 40 hour weeks, and as far as I know, they've never laid workers off. But right now, I'm very worried about our community. Right now, I'm very worried about our nation. I hope my fears about our economy turn out to be exaggerated. I hope things don't get too bad, and if they do, I hope it doesn't last very long. But if it does, I actually think it might be a good thing for American education.

At least someone's finally talking about it!

2008-11-15T05:27:00.000-08:00

As I went browsing through education blogs the other day, I was surprised to come across a discussion on New Talk on restoring order and respect in public schools. New Talk advertises itself as a place where "experts discuss America's toughest issues," and their discussion included university professors and the like. I'm convinced that improving behavior and motivation in the classroom are the two biggest challenges we have in public education, but I can't remember seeing a discussion on this by "experts" before.

There are a lot of fingers being pointed at administrators in New Talk's discussion. Jeff Abbott, an education professor says this:

I think a lack of order and discipline is more prevalent in the public schools than the public may be aware of, and particularly in urban schools. I know at least one major urban school where the central office has put pressure on principals to not expel minority students, so the school system's minority expulsion rates look low to the public.

However, urban schools are not the only schools suffering from discipline problems. Just this week I visited a rural school and was told by the assistant principal that he had just conferenced with a boy who was tardy 17 times already this year. Both the assistant principal and principal of that school expressed serious concerns about their authority to discipline, and whether they would be supported by the central office and school board when a parent complains about his or her child being disciplined.

Kelly Flynn, an author and columnist, adds parents to the mix. She says:

I agree with Jeff that the lack of order and discipline in public schools is more prevalent than the public realizes. I taught for nearly 20 years in a large suburban-turning-urban district...We had strong, clear, progressive discipline processes in place, but they were regularly overturned if a parent complained loudly enough. That, more than anything else, affected school culture because kids, and their parents, know how to work the system. If we are going to approach the problem of order and respect in our public schools, we need to start with parents.

With all due respect, I think the idea that we should start with parents is a non-starter. It sounds so good, but nothing is going to happen regarding that. Parents are going to do what parents are going to do. Some will be fantastic and supportive, but there will always those that will want to make sure that their little angels are not disciplined. Ms. Flynn actually addresses the central problem when she says this: "An administrator recently told me that in the early years of his career he was threatened with lawsuits once or twice. Now he is threatened with lawsuits once or twice a day."

It's easy for me as a teacher to criticize administrators for not being firm enough, when I'm not the one who has to worry about being sued. I know that I'm sounding like a broken record here, but the root of the problem is the Supreme Court's declaration that education is a property right that can't be taken away without due process of law. That sounded so wonderful, and so many politicians have wanted to jump on that bandwagon, but IT DOESN'T WORK! That is what leads to all these lawsuits as parents protect their little darlings' rights, and that is the major reason that we don't have better order and respect in our public schools today. Sandra Day O'Connor once said that when deciding whether to overturn a previous Court ruling, it has to be determined whether the rule works. Well, this one doesn't.

I do believe it is possible for a public school to have good discipline, and Joshua Phillips gives an example:

I taught for one year at a large urban high school in Boston and experienced many of the things described by both Jeff and Kelly. When my students misbehaved, I would follow the protocols and systems outlined by the school’s administration. However, when I needed the support of the administration regarding a difficult student and/or a challenging family, I was often told to handle the situation myself.

I then taught at a smaller public school in Boston called Roxbury Preparatory Charter School, which had a similar population of students (100% students of color, ~70% eligible for free/reduced price lunch). Roxbury Prep’s Code of Conduct was virtually identical to that of the Boston Public Schools. The major difference was the administration wholeheartedly supported teachers when it came to discipline incidents. In short, the Code of Conduct was enacted...A structured, safe learning environment can be built in a public school as long as all staff members are on the same page and willing to do the work to implement discipline systems each and every day. Roxbury Prep has consistently been the highest-performing urban middle school in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The high expectations regarding discipline and the willingness of the administration to follow through on infractions of the Code of Conduct have enabled Roxbury Prep teachers to focus on what they do best—providing rigorous, engaging lessons for their students.

I think there are a couple of keys to having the kind of discipline Phillips talks about in a public school. First of all, you need one helluva principal. The second thing you need, and Phillips make this point, is for the teachers to all be on the same page. That means the school can't be very big. Three problems with all this are that there are a lot of principals out there who are mediocre at best, there are a lot of teachers who wouldn't buy into a the tough approach that works so well at Roxbury, and finally, I doubt that it's practical to break all the large public schools we have throughout the nation into small ones. So these are the things I think we need to do:

1. There are models out there of public schools and charter schools in inner-cities and other areas that are succeeding. In most of the cases I've read about, one thing they have in common is that they shun much of the progressive crap that is taught in schools of education. Education schools have to get out of their ivory tower-theoretical worlds, get real, and start focusing on methods that actually work. If they want to throw in some progressive methods as options now and then, that would probably be a good thing. But they need to quit acting like anyone who uses traditional, teacher-directed methods is an educational Neanderthal, and they need to focus much more on classroom management and discipline.

2. Improve the way we decide who becomes principals. Right now, too many principals are in their positions because they were teachers who simply wanted to make more money, or worse yet, teachers who weren't very good and wanted to get out of the classroom. We need a system that is designed to recruit principals from the most competent, level-headed teachers that we have in field.

3. Those principals must be given the power to keep their best teachers--the ones who are willing to be on the same page, and get rid of their worst ones. I know there are teachers who hate this idea, because they have no faith in principals. Maybe some sort of independent panel could be set up in a district that a senior teacher could appeal to if he or she believed the termination was unfair.

4. The Supreme Court's decision that education is a property right that can't be taken away without due process of law must be re-visited.

Great ideas, huh? And I said people in education schools are living in ivory towers! Oh well, at least someone's talking about it.

Improving education vs. students' rights

2008-11-09T06:09:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, when I hadn't posted for awhile, my oldest son emailed me this article to, as he said, "stir the kettle." The article blasted American schools because kids today are less likely to graduate than their parents. Come on, American schools, what the heck is the matter with you? Why can't you do better?

As I was reading that article, I came across this one about schools trying to enforce dress codes. The article began with this sentence:

It took only an hour for parents in Omaha, Neb., to get in touch with the American Civil Liberties Union.

That article dealt with a school sending kids home who wore tee-shirts memorializing a student who was shot. The school said they were disruptive and possibly gang related, but the ACLU says the school is forcing kids to sacrifice their "free speech rights at the schoolhouse door."

From that article, I went to a video about students and parents who are protesting against a school that is telling it's cheerleaders that they can't wear their very short skirts in school because that violates its dress code. One cheerleader parent said, "It's a big deal, it's crushing."

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about a parent who was suing a school for suspending his son who was wearing a tee-shirt that read "Obama is a terrorist's best friend." The school gave the student the option of turning the tee-shirt inside-out after it had caused an altercation at the school, but the kid, apparently with the encouragement of his father, refused. What all of these things have in common is that schools are doing things in an attempt to maintain order and create the best possible learning environment, and they are being challenged for violating students' rights.

As Philip K. Howard said in his book, The Death of Common Sense, the courts' interpretation of students' rights has done more damage to public education than anything else in the last 40 years. (I wonder how many of the Supreme Court justices responsible for making the most important of those decisions sent their kids to public schools.) If we really want to make significant improvement in public education, especially in schools that are doing poorly, we are going to have to re-think the concepts of "the right to an education" and student rights in general.

I am more convinced than ever about this than ever after reading Sweating the Small Stuff. That book is about six inner-city schools that have been completely turned around, but a reader will be hard-pressed to find anything about a concern for student rights. There is, however, plenty of concern about the kids' education. Most of those schools had uniforms, and they didn't even tolerate students having their shirttails out. Even when reading about the one public school discussed in the book, I saw nothing about a student's right to be there. In fact, one student recalled being told by a teacher, "If you're going to behave like that, you won't be able to stay here."

This is one area in which I actually agree with my libertarian friends. Education should not be considered a right. A "right" is something that government should not be able to take away from you, not something government is obligated to give you. As Philip K. Howard says, education is not a right, but a benefit provided by a democratic society. I believe that our democracy should provide education, but there are going to be a lot of places where we can't do it effectively as long as we look at it as a right.

Good feeling!

2008-11-06T14:44:00.002-08:00

I am a history teacher, and we have just finished the reasons for the Civil War and are now on the war itself. In our discussion about the causes, we talk a lot about the different views on slavery in the 1800s. I'm 57 years old, and I had a father who insisted on having Walter Cronkite or Chet Huntley and David Brinkley as regular dinner guests, so I grew up seeing black people being hosed down or having dogs sicced on them because they had the audacity to want to vote, and governors like George Wallace blocking schoolhouse doors to keep blacks from entering.

I voted for Barack Obama, but I would think that even many who voted for John McCain should get a pretty good feeling when they watch African-Americans across the nation celebrating, Colin Powell choking up with emotion, and Jesse Jackson crying uncontrollably with the joy of seeing the election of our first African-American president. Only a fool would suggest that prejudice no longer exists in our nation, but, "We shall overcome!" has never had so much meaning.

Reforms I could learn to love!

2008-11-02T14:48:00.000-08:00

As I said in my last post, I took a two week hiatus from my blogging, and I never really intended to take that much time off. I have been busy. I traveled to the Twin Cities for a hockey coaches' clinic, and that meant the extra work of preparing for a substitute before I left, and then catching up after I got back. But being busy wasn't the main reason that I was so quiet. I took so much time off because I've been reading Sweating the Small Stuff. I wanted to do a post on it, and I just couldn't figure out what I wanted to say.

I should say before I go on that I have not turned into a critic of public education, and this certainly isn't meant as an indictment of public schools. I am still convinced that the people in our school district are getting what they want, and that's probably true for most public schools around the country. The kids who want to go to four-year colleges end up going to four-year colleges, the kids who want to go to vo-techs end up going to them, and the kids who just want to graduate from high school and go to work in a factory end up doing that. Nevertheless, I think we can do so much better.

Sweating the Small Stuff is about six inner-city schools that have their kids performing incredibly well. Before I read the book, I thought I'd be writing a "Yeah, but..." post. Yeah, they've got great results in those schools, but it's unfair to compare those schools to normal public schools because.... I do believe it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for most public schools to do the things that even University Park Campus High School, the only semi-regular public school described in the book, is able to do. Nevertheless, while reading the book, I found myself focusing on the admiration and envy I was feeling for the people involved in setting up and operating those schools. I also found myself wondering how public schools like mine could at least move in the direction that the outstanding schools described have taken.

The author, David Whitman, describes all six schools as "paternalistic." They treat their students like a very tough but loving father would treat his children. They tolerate no misbehavior, no acts of disrespect toward teachers or other students; they set high standards, and they expect the kids to meet them. Of all the remarkable accomplishments I read about in the book, the one that struck me the most was that of a seventh-grade class at the American Indian Public Charter School in Oakland: the entire class had perfect attendance for an entire year. That's thirty kids for 180 days. Since I had five kids absent from my fifth hour class on Friday, perhaps you can understand why that impresses me.

The basic thing all the schools do is to focus from day one on creating a culture in which learning and achievement are valued and disrespect for teachers and peers is not tolerated. Discipline is tough and immediate, and operates according to the "broken windows" theory of James Wilson. The idea of this is that if there is one broken window in a building and it gets repaired quickly, end of problem. On the other hand, if it doesn't get repaired quickly, pretty soon you've got a bunch of broken windows. When it comes to student conduct it means that if there are a few minor conduct problems and they are ignored, pretty soon your school becomes a zoo in which no one can learn. I think public schools have suffered badly from the broken windows theory over the past generation or two. Quite frankly, when I read about the cultures in those inner-city schools described by Whitman, and then see the behavior and attitudes of many of the kids in my own school, it makes me want to cry.

One advantage that all of the schools described in Sweating the Small Stuff have is that the families of the kids have chosen to send their kids to them. That is a huge advantage, and it cannot be dismissed. If we want public schools to improve significantly, however, I'm convinced that we have to try to do some of the things that those schools are doing, even though we have to do it with kids who are basically assigned to our schools. There are a lot of schools around the nation, including mine, that could use some paternalism.

Whitman, like many critics of public education, views our teachers' unions as a major obstacle to improving education. He says that the six schools that did so well either had unions that were meaningless or no unions at all. My question is, does it have to be that way?

As I've said before, I'm grateful for what unions have done for me. There is no question in my mind that my salary would be less, and I would have a much less comfortable lifestyle if it weren't for teachers' unions. But I really believe that our unions have to change. There is no question that they have the potential to be our main instrument to bring about positive change. Other than helping to keep teachers' salaries reasonable, they've done very little in that regard. In fact, our critics are probably right about them being obstacles. It's time for our teachers' unions to start behaving more like professional associations and less like unions.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if our "professional associations" would take the lead in trying to get courts and legislatures to recognize that discipline and order are necessary in schools if learning is going to take place. So much of what the courts and legislatures have done over the last forty years have made good discipline in public schools much more difficult if not impossible. Wouldn't it be wonderful if our "professional associations" would take the lead in getting education schools to quit pushing solely child-centered methods. Maybe they could even urge them to teach more about maintaining discipline and order in classrooms, rather than encouraging teachers to "negotiate" with the kids. Finally, wouldn't it be wonderful if our unions would begin to help schools keep their best teachers and get rid of their worst ones regardless of seniority. Teachers have the power to control our unions and I really believe most teachers would like to see these things happen. If that's not true, then that is an indictment of us all.

Colleges, Manipulation, and Ed. Schools

2008-11-01T10:04:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in two weeks, and have I ever been feeling guilty about that. I guess that's the Catholic in me. There is an explanation, but I won't get into that now. I had actually started working on another post, but then I got a letter from a former student, James Erickson, and he asked that I share the letter with my seniors. James is conservative, and the letter reflects that, but I think it's quite fair and the message is a good one. I told James that I would share it with my seniors, but I would also use it on my blog. Here it is:

Congratulations! If you are reading this, I am going to help you save your mind as you pursue further studies. You are in a world that is attempting daily to manipulate your every thought and deed, and it's about to grow worse. This world wants your personal opinions and beliefs to sink to the bottom of the ocean and share space with the Titanic. Before I throw you a life-vest and save your mind, you should know who and what are grabbing your ankles trying to pull you under.

Currently you are formulating opinions based off of what you see and hear on TV, what your parents tell you, what your teachers tell you, what you read in newspapers and magazines, what Hollywood's hottest are wearing, and what your peers are doing. What if I told you that some of your opinions aren't even yours? Think about it. When is the last time you heard something on TV and repeated it to a friend as if it was originally your point? When have you done that and your point turned out to be incorrect? This is the danger of allowing what we see and hear to become our opinions without further investigation. Let me ask another question. Do you ever feel frustrated because it seems that everyone else has something or is doing something you aren't doing? Have you ever felt out of the mainstream? Have you ever jumped into the mainstream for the sole purpose of avoiding being in the minority? If so, you are forfeiting your mind. You are becoming a robot, and guess what happens to robots? They sink to the bottom of the ocean and learn how to rust from the Titanic. Guess what fellow robots? The manipulation gets worse.

Chances are that you may be attending college in the near future. College, the land of bountiful opportunities and rigorous challenges, endless parties and last minute cram sessions. College can also be a breeding ground for manipulation if you aren't careful. Alright robots, here are the facts. Upon arriving at college, you will find yourself immersed in a world with seemingly endless possibilities. You will likely feel slightly confused within your first semester as you adjust to college life. At this point, your mind's defenses are down, and from my observations the professors know it. If he hasn't told you already, Mr. Fermoyle will teach you that it is the common belief that the more education one receives, the more liberal that person is likely to become. Why is this? Some compare increased intelligence to liberal tendencies. I, however, will give you the facts. The bottom line is that many college professors are liberal and strongly express their beliefs, both political and otherwise, in their classrooms. They advocate liberal agendas and are not open-minded to other views.

Many of my teachers have pushed their political views on students during lectures, but for the sake of time I will give one example. Last year, I took a global issues class. My professor enjoyed showing movies to our class that correlated with our discussion topics. One day we watched a movie that professed Fox News to be "the Biased Satan" of the media world. After showing this movie, my professor asked us our thoughts on the film. After hearing several of my fellow classmates exclaim how biased Fox News was, I raised my hand. My teacher called on me with reluctance knowing that I wasn't likely to be impressed by this film. I started by acknowledging that Fox is definitely biased. Then, however, I said that the filmmaker's intent was to show only the bias of Fox News. I claimed how easy would have been for me to find an ideologically opposite bias on MSNBC and make an equally manipulative film. I further argued that if the filmmaker had wanted to make his film credible, he should have addressed the bias in ALL of media.

I easily could have bought into my professor's film agenda, but I chose to keep an open mind. This is the life-vest that will keep you afloat. You do not have to become a robot. You do not have to succumb to indoctrination--conservative, liberal, or otherwise. You can save your mind by doing one simple thing--QUESTION EVERYTHING! It is too easy to believe everything that we hear from those we respect. I have seen it happen to many of my classmates. Investigate everything, and express what you feel is right in your mind and in your heart. In fact, I challenge you to investigate and challenge this very letter. Get in that habit. We are the future of the United States of American, and we have to choose whether to sink to the bottom of the ocean, or rise to the top of the mountain. It's your mind. It's your choice.
As I read James's letter, I couldn't help thinking back to a couple of comments on my last post from Michael Mazenko and Physics Teacher about the role of education schools in the problems in our education system. From 1999-2001 I took classes to earn a Masters Degree. Nearly all of the classes promoted so-called progressive, student-centered methods, and quite frankly, I thought a lot of it was crap. What was being promoted did not square with my experience. Since I had been teaching for 25 years, however, I challenged everything, and I was able to get away with it. The overall program was valuable for me because there were some good things mixed in there, and I took everything I was "taught" with a gigantic grain of salt. But what about people who are just going into teaching? They are probably buying everything their professors are telling them, just like James says. But it's not just young kids who have no experience. I don't know how many times I've been to workshops where the same garbage has been hoisted upon us, and I look around and all I see is teachers nodding in agreement. They should know better.

The main reason I haven't posted for so long is that I have been reading Sweating the Small Stuff by David Whitman, a book about six inner-city schools that have had remarkable success. One thing those schools have in common is that they have almost completely shunned "progressive" teaching methods. I am not going to say that those methods can never be of any use, but I do believe that the infatuation that our colleges of education have with them plays a major role in the problems we have in American K-12 education.

The presidential debate and education: Same old, same old!

2008-10-17T03:07:00.001-07:00

I watched the debate the other night, and I was depressed but not surprised by the discussion about education. Bob Schieffer got in the media's points about how much the U.S. spends on education and how terrible our test scores are, and of course, he phrased it all in crisis terms. Both candidates seemed to sadly nod their heads and look concerned.

I doubt that many viewers understood that the media and politicans have been referring to American education as being in crisis since the 1950s, and that the people who attended those schools continue to be the heart of what is considered the most productive workforce in the world. I doubt that many viewers realized that, as Jay Matthews pointed out, 70 percent of American public schools are actually quite good. Many parents and other viewers could probably figure out that in order to improve our test scores compared to other nations, we would have to put more emphasis on academics. They might not have thought about it enough, however, to realize that in order to do that we might have to de-emphasize high school football, basketball, hockey, etc., and their kids might not be able to have after school jobs. And there is no way that a politician running for office would tell them that.

Overall, I liked what Obama had to say about education more than McCain, especially about parents taking responsibility, but I don't think either candidate will make much of a difference to our schools. How many times and for how many years have I heard that we should recruit better teachers? I don't know for sure, but that sure wasn't the first time. I do have to agree with McCain, however, that throwing more money at the problem is not the answer. Oh, if you put the money in the right places, it might help somewhat, but it won't have us suddenly kicking the Korean's backsides on international math tests.

McCain is very big on vouchers, and I don't like that, but I have to admit that his position on them is more "honest" than Obama's. Both of the candidates are well-off financially, so both of them could afford to live in nice neighborhoods where the best public schools would be. Neither of them, however, thinks that those good public schools are good enough for their kids. I think they're wrong, but as I said, at least McCain is honest about it. When McCain says to Obama that more parents should have the opportunity to send kids away from the public school system that neither of them really believe in, it's tough for Obama to answer.

I'm not knocking private schools here, but it does bother me that so many liberals who pose as great supporters of public schools won't put their kids enrollment where their mouths are. To tell the truth, I don't think either McCain or Obama have a clue about what the real problems are in public schools.

A public gay and lesbian school?

2008-10-12T10:44:00.000-07:00

I stopped by Ms. Cornelius,s blog today and found this interesting post. Chicago is considering having a public school for gay and lesbian kids. I think that is a bad idea for a number of reasons.

As I've expressed in previous posts, I feel great sympathy for kids with homosexual tendencies who are bullied and harassed by other students because of that. But there are bullies out there who will bully for any reason they can find. If we try to segregate kids based on anything they might be bullied or harassed for, we're going to have to have a lot of different schools. Should we have a special school for fat kids? For skinny kids? For kids with bad acne? I had a very distinct walk, and I got made fun of frequently for it. Should we have a special school for kids who walk funny? We have to learn to live together, and we also have to deal with idiots who want to make fun of us for stupid reasons.

The best way for dealing with students who are determined to harass and bully other students would be to allow and even to demand that public schools not tolerate it. That means it should be easier for us to dismiss the bullies from our schools.

It also seems to me that there are a lot of teenagers who are confused about their sexuality. I suspect that some of the most blatant teenage homophobes might fit into that category. In any case, that's another reason I think setting up a school based on sexual preference shouldn't be done. Some critics of public schools accuse us of promoting homosexuality, and this seems to come pretty close to doing just that. It certainly plays right into the hands of those who blast public schools because, they say, we are promoting a liberal agenda.

There are those who think public schools should be promoting a liberal agenda, and some of them are teachers. Those who are pressuring us from the outside are misguided, and those who actually work in the schools and do so are unethical. The same goes for those teachers who try to promote a conservative agenda. There aren't as many of those as there are on the left, but they are every bit as wrong.

Here's an idea! When it comes to controversial subjects, teach kids as many facts as we can, and encourage them to find facts on their own. Then, allow them to discuss it civilly and respectfully in class with students who disagree with them, and allow them to come to final conclusions on their own.

I think that's actually the way most teachers do it.

Should high schools sponsor dances?

2008-10-10T15:50:00.000-07:00

I'm afraid that if anyone has been wondering whether I am an old man who is losing touch with the younger generation, I am about to convince them. But if anyone decides that is the case after this post, I want them to know that I am not alone.

I recently came to the conclusion that high schools should not sponsor dances. But I came to that conclusion after a discussion with my daughter-in-law, Kelly, and she is definitely not old and out of touch. She's 33-years-old, intelligent, beautiful, and she also happens to be a probation officer at a high school in Iowa. In the last few weeks we have both had the "pleasure" of chaperoning homecoming dances at our respective schools.

In 1992 I became the sophomore class advisor at our high school, and despite the fact that I have been more than willing to give the position up to anyone who wanted it, I have been the advisor ever since. My one big responsibility in that position is being in charge of the homecoming dance. Of all the responsibilities I have in my job, that is the one that I am least comfortable with. Running a dance is just not my cup of tea.

For the last several years, there have been things that have gone on at the dances that have made me uncomfortable as the guy in charge. "Sex on the Beach," "I'm Too Sexy for My Shirt," and songs like that have always gotten a huge response from the kids, and although that bothered me, I dismissed it as simply being part of teenaged culture. This year, however, I was more aware of them than ever. Back in August on one of my posts, Anonymous implied that high schools promote high school sex. In a reply to Anonymous, I scoffed at the idea. But as I walked through the mass of bodies grinding back and forth at our homecoming dance, and listened to the words of the songs (when I could understand them), I could not help but think of Anonymous, and I was grateful that he wasn't there.

When I talked to Kelly, I found that she felt a lot like I did. In fact, the high school principal at her high school had announced on the intercom on the day of their dance that there should be "no inappropriate dancing." Good luck! The most popular "dance style" among teenagers today is for the male to stand as close as possible behind the female and for both of them to grind up and down in a motion that reminds me of what a friend of mine once said about dancing: "Dancing is expressing vertically what is best expressed horizontally."

One might suggest that those in charge of a dance should outlaw that particular dance move. But is anyone naive enough to think that these young people with hormones oozing from them wouldn't come up with something that might even top that one? And trying to enforce anything like that would be impossible. Even at our small school, there are 300 kids massed together in a dark room. Trying to walk 20 feet from the outside of the mass toward the middle is almost impossible. If a chaperone at a dance was going to try to keep students from dancing too close to one another, or to keep them from dancing "inappropriately," that chaperone would soon begin to feel like the little Dutch boy.

I do not mean this as a condemnation of our teenagers today. Sex is a huge part of our culture, and kids are constantly bombarded with it by our media. They are at a stage of their lives where that has to sound pretty darned good. The day of the sock-hop is gone; the day of the grinder is here. I'm also not arguing that kids should never be able to dance, but I am arguing that schools should not be in the business of sponsoring dances and the behavior that is bound to occur.

Can a Christian vote for Obama?

2008-10-06T15:36:00.000-07:00

I've had a couple of posts recently about people who couldn't restrain themselves from endorsing political candidates in the classroom. Recently a number of pastors, who can't resist telling their parishioners who they should vote for, have made the news. They risk their churches' tax exempt status by doing so, and Minneapolis StarTribune carried an article about them yesterday. Gus Booth, a fundamentalist pastor in Warroad, has been very involved in this movement. He made headlines across the country last May when he told his parishioners that a Christian cannot vote for either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton because of their positions on abortion and gay rights.

I find pastors like Booth offensive for two reasons. First of all, I think they give Christianity a bad name. Like radical Muslims, or radicals of any other faith, they are convinced that they have a complete monopoly on the truth, and anyone who believes anything different is evil. I also find them offensive because of the effect they have on our politics. I am so sick of Republicans and Democrats who find it necessary to demonize the other side. Not only that, but they drive a lot of good people out of politics who don't want to associate with the extemists who have taken over the two parties. After Booth and his followers took control of the local Republican caucus in February, a number of local Republicans with common sense said they would never go back again.

When I read about Booth's idiotic sermon last spring, I was appalled. At that time, I was leaning toward McCain, but I was tempted to respond with a letter to the editor in our local newspaper. Since I always have some kids in my classes who go to his church, however, I decided that it probably wasn't a good idea. As it turned out, I'm glad I didn't, because Robert Baril, a former student who is now majoring in political science at Bemidji State University, wrote a better letter than I could have. Robert is more to the left than I am, but his letter made me proud to have been his teacher. Here it is.

I was stunned recently to hear that a pastor in Warroad was using his sermons to tell people who they should vote for. Apparently, his message was the "good Christians" should not vote for Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton because of their stances on abortion and gay marriage, which seems somewhat lmiting as there are plenty of other reasons not to vote for them (though I did).

Now, I have seen Pastor Booth administer a wedding, and he came off as both warm and funny. He seems like a decent man, and I understand his passion for politics. What I disagree with is by making statements like that, Mr. Booth is turning the 2008 campaign into a two-issue election: abortion and gay marriage. This may be painful for some to hear, but this is exactly what the Republicans want, because they use the religious vote to win elections.

The same thing happened in 2004 when gay marriage was the big issue for religious voters, instead of the war in Iraq--currently in year five. As soon as they won, what? That promised gay marriage to the Constitution? Didn't happen. What did happen? A disastrous foreign and domestic policy that has left us militarily vulnereable abroad and financially unstable at home.

The only role these issues really play in elections is to serve as a conservative distraction from issues they're less inclined to talk about, such as the deficit. Could we at least make China work a little bit for their ultimate takeover?

This also may be tough to hear, but it's the truth: abortion will never be completely banned in this country. The closest you can come is to make it a state's issue and limit it to the first or second term. I don't agree with the practice myself, but at the same time recognize that others may live under circumstances that precipitate a different belief and ulimately their call, just as it should be a consenting adult's call to marry the consenting adult of their choice.

I'm sorry, but I fail to see how a gay couple threatens the sanctity of marriage, which straight people can't seem to get right, having a roughly 50% divorce rate. The Bible is often referenced to combat the argument for gay marriage. The problem is that it has also been referenced to justify slavery. There are so many alternate translations that practically anyone can use the Bible to justify their actions.

Our death penalty is based on eye-for-an-eye vengeance, yet there's a commandment against killing. And if the Bible is excused from participation, the argument against gay marriage falls through. For procreation only? Well, sorry infertile people. They'll raise gay children? We'll just elect them to be vice-president.

What issues should matter? Iraq, Afghanistan, the economy, universal health care (something I think Jesus would be just alright with), our painfully degraded infrastructure, taxes (this is the first time the country has been at war and we haven't raised taxes. I think if we ask our soldiers to sacrifice their lives, we can sacrifice a few extra cents), and the environment...

If you want to vote for John McCain, that's fine. I'm not. If that makes me a bad Christian, I ask you to pray for me. But I'm choosing to base my vote on issues that affect me directly: the economy, the wars we're deeply involved in, and health care.

It's not that issues like abortion and gay marriage don't matter to me, but I know that whoever I elect is not going to affect these already contentious issues that much. Because these areas are such political land mines, and politicians are all about career survival, they try to avoid dealing with them as much as possible. They're much more satisfied with the status quo because that gives them something dependable to complain about every four year to stay in power. Conversely, on matters such as foreign policy and economic strategy, our future president will have a significant and profound influence. That is why I feel they are of greater concern when it comes to basing your electoral choice. Your vote is your choice, for your reasons. I didn't write this to tell you who to vote for. I just wanted to remind you that there's too much at stake in this presidential race for it to be reduced to a two-issue campaign.

This time the conservative is right

2008-10-01T14:49:00.000-07:00

While browsing through Joanne's site today, I came across this article about teachers who were wearing "Educators for Obama" buttons to school. How dumb can you get?

It would be bad enough if it was just one teacher who was foolish and unprofessional enough to push his political beliefs while in the classroom teaching high school kids, but apparently there were a number of them. What makes it even worse is that it took a parent complaint to get them to put their buttons away. Couldn't anyone else in that building figure out that there was something wrong with what they were doing?

Last week I complained about a conservative nut-case who was using his child to push his political agenda and to get a little ink in the press. The reason he gave was that public schools are "full of liberal loons." It is unfortunate that some people in our profession provide support for statements like that.

Class size matters

2008-09-28T02:53:00.000-07:00

One of the main reasons I wrote a book was that there were so many times that I would hear statements by so-called experts about public schools that didn't square with my own experience. Those experts would often claim that their statements were based on some sort of "study" or "research." One of the best examples of this actually came in a book I read after I wrote my own--Jay P. Greene's Education Myths. Greene basically claimed that class size doesn't matter. Well, it does.

Joanne Jacobs ran a post yesterday called "Is TSL the Answer?" which is also based on research, but this is research a teacher could learn to love. This research was done by Bill Ouchi, and it indicates that class size is very important. That squares with the experience of almost any teacher who has spent any amount of time in a classroom.

Oh yes, there are exceptions. One of the worst classes I've ever had was one of the smallest classes I've ever had. It had five or six really disruptive kids, and the motivation of the class as a whole was very low. I'd get a headache just thinking about the class. On the other side of the coin, one of the best classes I ever had was one of the largest classes I ever had--up until the last couple of years, that is. That was a regular American History class with 27 kids, but there was an unusually high number of motivated students in it. That class was an absolute delight. But most classes have more of a mixture of kids--a couple who are pretty motivated, one or two who are mildly disruptive, and a lot who fall somewhere in the middle. In those classes, size definitely matters.

Up until just a few years ago, I was very fortunate. My classes were usually around twenty-two or twenty-three kids. Our school district has had to make cuts, however, so things have changed. This year each of my three regular American History classes have thirty-two kids in them. If anyone thinks its not harder for me to do the kind of job that I want to do, they are out of their minds. My classroom is so crowded with desks that just walking up and down the rows is a challenge. I tend to evaluate just about everything, and correcting papers seems to take forever. In social studies and English, there is nothing like having the students write to bring about and measure learning, but the more kids I have, the less attractive making writing assignments becomes. It also becomes increasingly difficult to try to give the attention to low achievers that might be able to motivate them to do better.

Class sizes have increased throughout our school district during the last several years, and there has been a very noticeable deterioration in the behavior, motivation, and performance of our high school students. Gee, is it possible there's a connection?

What a jerk!

2008-09-24T15:15:00.000-07:00

Joanne Jacobs has a post today that deals with some of the nonsense that public schools have to deal with in this day and age.

An eleven-year-old brat, with obvious encouragement from his father, wore a home-made t-shirt to school that said, "Obama is a terrorist's best friend." The school had asked their students to wear red, white, and blue to show their patriotism. The school told the kid that he could either turn the shirt inside-out or be suspended. The kid chose to be suspended. Now, Dear Ol' Dad, who's position is that public schools are "full of liberal loons," is suing the school. What a complete jerk!

Joanne Jacobs has the best education blog that I know of, and she usually shows good common sense, so I was disappointed when she said, "Having asked students to express a message with their clothing, the school can’t censor the message."

The school asked kids to show patriotism. Earlier this year I wrote a post about teaching patriotism, and anyone who read that should know that I would have reservations about having a red, white and blue day--at least at the high school level. But that doesn't mean I think that school should have to put up with a t-shirt containing an obnoxious message like the one that kid wore.

If the student wanted to wear a "McCain For President," t-shirt, I think that would be fine. But wearing one that says "Obama is a terrorist's best friend" is clearly meant to cause confrontation. Maybe the eleven-year-old wouldn't realize that, but his father sure would. In fact, does anyone doubt that all the press coverage this incident has gotten isn't exactly what the old man hoped for?

The school correctly decided that the t-shirt the student was wearing was inappropriate, and they acted accordingly. Now they are being sued by this pathetic, publicity-seeking father, who is itching for a fight. He has used his eleven-year-old son to get what he wants. As we said in the limbo contest at our homecoming pep rally last week, "How low can you go?"

Whose fault is this?

2008-09-18T15:21:00.000-07:00

Joanne Jacobs has a post today on colleges having to place students into remedial classes.

Christina Jeronomo was an “A” student in high school English classes; she thought she was prepared for college. But she had to take remedial English at Long Beach Community College, delaying her goal of transferring to a four-year college where she can earn a psychology degree. From AP:

. . . a new study calculates, one-third of American college students have to enroll in remedial classes. The bill to colleges and taxpayers for trying to bring them up to speed on material they were supposed to learn in high school comes to between $2.3 billion and $2.9 billion annually.

This makes American schools sound terrible, and I have to admit that it bothers me when I hear that a teacher in a subject as important as English gives A's to kids who haven't learned very much. But there are two very simple solutions for colleges who are constantly whining about having to provide remedial classes for some of their students:

1. Don't let those students in.

2. Let them take the regular classes, and if they don't make it, fail them.

Now, I know colleges aren't going to do that, but it would go a long way toward solving the problem. They would also be doing high school teachers across the nation a huge favor. As long as students don't have to learn very much in high school in order to get into college, there are going to be a lot of high school students who don't learn very much.

Americans, including American students, are very practical people. They generally have an idea what it is they have to do to get what is important to them, and they have an amazing capacity to get that done. On the other hand, especially when it comes to high school classes, if you can't make it clear how the learning in a class will matter to them in the very near future, many of them will make very little effort to learn.

Any high school teacher can think of kids who seemed useless as students in high school, but then found something that they really wanted to do in life and ended up graduating from college in order to do it. Kids who seemed like they could never be good students became good students as soon as becoming a good student really mattered to them.

Unless there is something more to this story, it is scandalous that this girl could get an A in an English, and that teacher should have a lot of explaining to do. Nevertheless, the ending of Joanne's post left me wanting to scream:

High school was too easy, Jeronimo says. She wishes she’d been told to work harder.

She wishes she'd BEEN TOLD to work harder? Puh-lease!

Broken schools???

2008-09-17T14:57:00.001-07:00

I have complained before about the media's coverage of public schools, and there is one thing for sure--it ain't just Fox News. This week CNN is running a feature called "Broken Schools." Man, am I tired of this garbage!

I've watched two of the segments, so far. The first one I saw was about "Dropout High" in Los Angeles, a school with a 58 percent dropout rate. It was pretty clear in that one that the school was in a neighborhood that was an absolute mess, and the school was stuck with dealing with its problems. The second one was about paying students for their performance in school and paying parents for getting involved. Neither of the two reports I saw really blasted public schools themselves, but I've got to wonder what they've got is store for the rest of the series. Let's face it, the title of the series says it all; it isn't exactly something that would inspire confidence in American education.

It is clear that bad news sells, and that is why the networks do what they can to dig up any dirt they can find on anyone or anything in the public eye. A few weeks ago, bloggers like KDerosa were gloating about a study saying that the public thinks more highly of the post office than public schools. Why am I not surprised? I mean, how many times do you see featured series on news networks titled, "The Broken Post Office."

Considering the bashing that we consistently take from the national media, it should surprise no one that there is a lack of public confidence in public schools in general. Yet, as Michael Mazenko pointed out in his article "The Mis-education of Sean Hannity," "Gallup polls show seventy-five percent of Americans are 'satisfied' or 'very satisfied' with their children's school. An even greater percentage of Americans (85%) are satisfied with their own education." One has to wonder how much higher than 75 and 85percent those numbers would be if people weren't constantly being told by the media that public schools are lousy.

The blasting public education is taking is nothing new. Much of my next couple of paragraphs is a repeat of a post that I did a couple of years ago, but I think it bares repeating. Two years ago, CBS had a story titled All Children Left Behind in which the featured another "blue ribbon" report saying that American education was falling hopelessly behind other countries. I remember reading Michael Crichton’s Rising Sun in the early 1990s. When the book came out, the U.S. was mired in a recession and Japan’s economy was rolling along. They seemed to be able to do no wrong. Rising Sun led the reader to believe that Japan was on the verge of taking over the United States economically, and of course, one of the main culprits was our education system.

Perhaps the most famous lambasting of American public education came in 1983 when the National Commission on Excellence in Education published Nation at Risk. We were told that "if an unfriendly foreign power had imposed our schools upon us we would have regarded it as an act of war." Many people remember that, but if you think that was the beginning of reports decrying the horrible state of American education, you’d be wrong. Before that, a Life Magazine cover that breathlessly announced a series of articles on the crisis in American education. The date on that magazine: March 24, 1958.

So for at least the last fifty years we have been hearing pronouncements that our education system—especially public education—has been doing a horrible job, and these pronouncements have inevitably been accompanied by doom and gloom prophecies about what this would mean for our nation’s future. If we were to take seriously what the media has been telling us about the American education system for the last fifty years, we should have been shocked when America landed the first man on the moon, then shocked again when it became clear that we had won the Cold War. Then we should have been absolutely flabbergasted when our economy recovered and became the envy of the world for the last two-thirds of the 90s, while Japan’s went into the tank. My question is this: If our public education system has been so terrible—or failing, as so many like to say—how in the world has our nation continued to do so well?

Let me make one thing clear. I know there are problems in public education. There is no question about that. There are problems in my own school. I don't think we're as good a school as we were five years ago. Yet, there is no doubt in my mind that any student who comes to our school and wants to get a good education can get one. Our big problem is that not enough want badly enough to do that.

As I began typing this, Fox News was running a story defending John McCain's statement that despite the financial crisis our nation is experiencing, our economy is fundamentally sound. The major point of the story was that the main fundamental in our economy is the people who make up our workforce, and our workforce is the most productive in the world. By workforce, I assume they didn't just mean factory workers, but also managers, computer programmers, engineers, researchers, etc. Gee, I wonder where most of those people went to school?

An "A-ha!" moment

2008-09-14T14:33:00.000-07:00

I finally broke down and ordered Sweating the Small Stuff by David Whitman. In the book, Whitman describes six high-performing inner-city schools, and he tells us that they are so good because they are "highly paternalistic."

It sounds like the education kids are getting in these school is excellent. A number of education bloggers have been buzzing about this book, so I had gotten an idea about how they operate. Before I ordered the book, I read a customer review by Cory Bower. Bower says this about Whitman's description of the schools:

All of the schools take a no-nonsense approach to discipline and work hard to create a positive school culture in which bad behavior is unacceptable and good behavior is rewarded. All of the schools go to great lengths to explicitly teach various social behaviors that one would expect to be second nature to middle and upper-income youth. All of the schools put great emphasis on attendance and manage to lengthen the school year and/or day in some fashion. And all of the schools have produced results that are quite impressive.

I think all of those are good things, and I don't mean to negate any of them. But as I read on, I came upon this information about the schools that gave me my "A-ha!" moment.

Whitman acknowledges some limitations to the these results -- the KIPP in the Bronx enrolls students that outperform their community peers before entering, The SEED School expels about 5% of their students, and Cristo Rey only admits students that they believe are capable of working in an upscale office, for example.

From the little I know about them, I'd say that these schools deserve the praise they are getting, but those are important limitations. In fact, those limitations make all the other things the schools are doing possible.

If there are lessons here that someone wants public schools to learn from, we are going to need to have some power that at least resembles the power that the schools presented have. If the public really wants us to have a "no-nonsense approach to discipline" and "to create a positive school culture in which bad behavior is unacceptable," then we are going to have to be able to impose meaningful consequences for that bad behavior. My understanding is that KIPP schools use humiliation and some kids end up dropping out as a result. I don't want us to use that. Cristo Rey only admits the students that it wants, and public schools certainly can't do that. The SEED School expels about 5% of their kids. Most public schools shouldn't need to expel than many, but maybe some do. My point is that there has to be a bottom line. When someone says that they won't accept bad behavior there have to be very serious consequences for anyone who is determined to behave badly. We don't need kids in public education to behave flawlessly, but we do need them to behave reasonably.

At least in the case of KIPP schools, I suspect that many parents who send their kids to them are hoping that they will become academic all-stars. I'm not knocking that, but that's not what most American parents are interested in. Most Americans just want their kids to get a good solid education. I'm absolutely convinced that public schools can provide that if we're given just some of the powers that those "paternalistic" schools have.

Michael Mazenko vs. Sean Hannity

2008-09-09T16:15:00.000-07:00

Michael Mazenko is a new entry into the educational blogosphere, and I, for one, welcome him. In a comment on a recent post of mine, Michael mentioned that he had written an editorial piece defending public education in the Denver Post. The piece was titled, "The Mis-education of Sean Hannity." I checked it out, and I thought it was excellent. Here is part of what Michael had to say:

"The government has ruined the education system."

Sean Hannity made this claim during a series of rants the other day as he argued down another liberal who was foolish enough to call in and debate him.

Ruined? The system may be troubled, inconsistent, inefficient, faltering, even damaged - but ruined? I have to disagree, and it's not just because I'm a teacher. As for the government being responsible, I was surprised by Sean's focus, as he usually blames the teachers and the unions.

The word "ruined" implies that at one time it was in good, even excellent, condition, but it no longer has any redeeming qualities. Both aspects of that assertion are flawed. In regards to past success, remember that Rudolph Flesch wrote "Why Johnny Can't Read" in 1955. Additionally, Harvard researcher Dianne Ravitch has documented the perpetual ups and downs of public education in "Left Back: a Century of Failed Public School Reform." Certainly, many schools in America have problems, and far too many inadequately educate their students. But ruined? No redeeming qualities? To quote Bill O'Reilly, "that's ridiculous."

There are countless examples of excellent public schools that are accomplishing more today with their students than I ever could have fathomed as a student twenty years ago - about the same time as the publication of that dire education warning "A Nation at Risk." I know this because I teach at one. Cherry Creek High School in Greenwood Village, Colorado, is regularly ranked as one the top high schools in the nation. Cherry Creek has an incredibly successful student population. Its large percentage of students in Advanced Placement classes, for which many departments have pass rates on the national exam of 90% or more, regularly accomplish tasks I didn't see until graduate school. Sean might want to take a look at the AP Calculus or European History exams before he decides that the system is in a state of "ruin." Another example - a couple years ago two students at Cherry Creek were featured on ABC News for their work on a new treatment for muscular dystrophy. Their education is hardly in a state of "ruin."

I have to admit that part of the reason that I was so eager to check out Michael's article was that I can't stand Sean Hannity. When his face appears on the tube, I almost trip over myself in my hurry to get to the remote so I can switch channels. I wasn't at all surprised to see what he had said about public education, but one of the reasons I can't stand him is because I honestly believe that people like him are the ones who are putting our "nation at risk."

When I say "people like him," I'm not just talking about conservative blowhards--I'm talking about their liberal counterparts as well. Our country is becoming more and more split along partisan lines, and as a result, it is becoming increasingly difficult to govern. In order for our system to work, people with different views need to find common ground and work together. Compromise is a necessity. Right now we have issues that absolutely must be addressed, and they must be addressed now. We have to do something about social security. We have to do something about Medicare. We have to do something about immigration. We have to do something about our dependence on foreign oil. But talk-show ideologues like Hannity have turned the saying "Come, let us reason together," into "Come, let us scream at each other," and unfortunately they have done nothing but grow in popularity. I'm sure the dollars are rolling in for Sean Hannity because of what he does. But will either McCain or Obama be able to govern when one of them becomes president a few months from now? Quite frankly, in large part thanks to the growing list of blowhards like Hannity, I think the odds are against both of them.

One teacher's take on gay rights

2008-09-05T15:01:00.000-07:00

After a recent post of mine, Anonymous responded by saying this about public schools:

Children are forced into hearing the pro-teen-sexuality, pro-homosexuality, anti-Christian, anti-America messages espoused by the unions.

I have heard that type of statement before, and in this post I want to address the part about homosexuality. As a teacher, I find this a particularly tough issue to deal with.

First of all, I should make clear that I am convinced that for the great majority of people, being straight or gay is not simply a matter of choice. By an early age, people have a strong predisposition to be one or the other. Whether that happens at birth, or in the early years of one's life, I don't know. But I believe that whether a person is straight or gay is pretty well determined by the time that person is in elementary school.

During my 34 years in the classroom, I have had some kids who struck me as probably being gay. I remember one very nice young man who seemed very feminine in the way he spoke and in his actions. He was a fantastic musician, and as far as I know, he never did anything to bother anybody. Yet, I remember hearing other kids in his class saying things like, "We ought to kill all queers!" Years later, I learned that this young man had "come out" while he was in college. But why should he have had to put up with those cruel comments while he was in high school. Things like this have caused me to have sympathy for people who have homosexual tendencies.

As I've said before, I consider my religious faith central to who I am. I am aware of the biblical arguments against homosexuality, and I take them seriously. But I am not a fundamentalist--I do believe that the writings in the Bible are products of their times. The most important teachings I get from the Bible are concern for the poor and downtrodden (and to me, homosexuals definitely fit in with the downtrodden), and the idea that we should treat people the way we would desire to be treated ourselves.

I am not gay. When I was young, I saw the beautiful young lady who would eventually become my wife, and I was able to woo her without any feelings of guilt. I remember the wonderful and exciting feelings in that process. Let's face it; there are few things as powerful as sexual feelings when you are in your twenties. Who am I to tell someone who has different sexual feelings than I do that they should not be able to go through that same wonderful process that I did in seeking someone that they love?

Look at the results of our our society's oppression of the feelings that homosexuals have. I am painfully familiar with two situations in which great damage has been done. In both of these situations, men denied their homosexual tendencies, and got married to women. In both cases the homosexual tendencies eventually took hold. In one case, the man began an affair with another man, and in the other case, the man--who was at that point a father of three children--was caught in a restroom in a bar with another man and arrested. What if we were more open and we allowed people who were homosexual to act on their feelings? Could anything possibly be worse than the two situations I just described?

Many people say that gays threaten the sanctity of marriage. As one of my former students said in a letter to the editor of our local newspaper after a pastor in town had told his parishioners that a good Christian couldn't vote for a Democrat because they supported gay rights, how can we make that case when nearly fifty percent of marriages in America end up in divorce?

I, personally, believe that civil unions is a reasonable solution to this problem. As you have probably gathered, I have empathy for gays, but I am also very sympathetic to the idea that marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman. If homosexuals want to love each other, live with each other, and be able to visit each other in hospitals, why should the rest of us care?

How do I handle this very controversial issue as a teacher? Believe it or not, I keep my big mouth shut. I allow kids to express their own opinions, and I try to remain as neutral as possible. (And I end up with about a 50-50 split.) When kids use the term "gay" to describe something, or if someone says, "We ought to kill all queers," I jump all over them, but if they want to attack gay rights in the opinion papers that they write, it's fine with me. Their chances of getting an A is every bit as good as those who favor gay rights, as long as they support their positions.

So there you go. That's this public school teacher's position on gay rights. If this one doesn't generate any comments, I'd better quit blogging!

Yes, there is such a thing as a stupid question!

2008-09-02T15:04:00.000-07:00

There was an article in the Minneapolis StarTribune last weekend on No Child Left Behind. I've indicated before that I have mixed feelings about NCLB, but there was a quote at the end of this article that I've heard before from NCLB supporters, and it never fails to get my goat. It comes from Deputy Commissioner of Education in Minnesota, Chas Anderson, and it refers to the unreachable and ridiculous goal of having ALL kids proficient in everything by 2014.

"When people say that we can't hit 100 percent," she said, "I'll ask them, 'If it's not 100 percent, if it's 90 or 80 percent, then you need to tell us which 20 percent of kids we're going to leave behind.' And no one can answer that question."

I can answer that. The answer is, "We don't know!" We are talking about a statistic, and we are talking about dealing with human beings with wills of their own. No matter how good a job teachers and schools do, some students, for whatever reasons, aren't going to care about being proficient. We KNOW that there will be some students somewhere who, no matter how hard we try, we aren't going to be able to reach. Will it be Billy Thompson or Sally Wilson? I have no idea!

I am often amazed by the things that are done in modern medicine. They have made great progress in so many things. For example, the survival rate for breast cancer has continually increased. But I doubt very much that they are going to have a 100% survival rate by 2014. To set that as a goal, and to tell the medical profession they are failing if they don't reach that would be the height of stupidity. But if you ask, "Well, which women do you want to die?" no one is going to say, Betty Jones and Sally Garfield. We don't know which women will die, and we don't want any of them to, but we know that some probably will.

The article also had a quote from a supporter of No Child Left Behind that I can live with:

For St. Paul Superintendent Meria Carstarphen, the law's implementation is imperfect. "But without it," she said, "we would have no leverage to bring to light the problems associated with the achievement gap, and that's at the heart of what the spirit of the law is about: Transparency. Are we doing the job or not?"

I think showing exactly where schools are is a good thing. I also think it's a good thing to set improvement goals, as long as those goals are reasonable. But when people make statements like the one Deputy Commissioner Anderson made, it's obvious that they are much more interested in playing politics with schools than they are in improving them.

Why I'll vote for Obama

2008-08-26T17:15:00.001-07:00

I love following politics, so I've been following this presidential election process for the last year-and-a-half. Although politicians aren't held in the highest esteem in modern day America, I like both Obama and McCain, so deciding who to vote for hasn't been easy for me. In the last few weeks, however, I've pretty well made up my mind that I'll vote for Obama. I'm afraid that might be the kiss of death for him, though, because he's been dropping in the polls ever since.

Since I'm a teacher, education is important to me, and that is one of the reasons I've moved into the Obama camp, but the way that fits in is more complicated than you'd think. Although the Democratic party line on education doesn't really inspire me, I have been very impressed by what Obama has said to parents about their responsibilities. It is something I'd never thought I'd hear a politician say. I also think the guy is very intelligent.

McCain on the other hand simply parrots the Republican party line on education. "We have failing schools, and so we need vouchers to save the day." I'm no fan of vouchers, but what really bothers me is that when I've heard McCain recite the party line, I've gotten the same feeling I have when I've given an essay test and read answers from a student who seemed to have something memorized without really understanding it. I just don't think McCain really cares about education. In fact, the only things I think McCain really cares about are foreign policy, the federal budget deficit, and earmarks. (For pro-lifers who vote for McCain based on abortion, I suspect they might end up very disappointed if he gets a chance to appoint Supreme Court justices, because I don't think he really cares that much about that issue.)

The things that McCain cares deeply about are important things, and I've agreed with most of his positions on those things over the past several year. I agreed when we went into Iraq in 2003. (Yup, I admit it! I completely bought into the WMD argument.) I listened to him when he said we needed more troops for the occupation, (Joe Biden was saying the same thing for quite a while) and I think the results of the surge have shown him to have been right. The problem is that events have also caused me to conclude that we need a different direction in our foreign policy. Our military can beat up anyone in the world, but it seems to me that our aggressive foreign policy is just gaining us more and more enemies. What we are doing isn't working. Right now I think we need a very intelligent guy more than we need a very experienced guy.

Believe me, I do have my reservations. Obama's lack of experience does bother me, and I have no confidence that he will reach across party lines. But the bottom lines for me are these: I think Obama does care about and will be engaged in a wider range of issues than McCain would be, I think he's smarter than McCain, and I think our foreign policy needs to move in a different direction.

OTHER POLITICAL THOUGHTS
1. Politically, I think Obama should have picked Hillary as his running mate. But when it comes to governing, I think he made the right choice in by-passing her and turning to Biden. The president needs to run the show, and although I think Hillary would be okay, nobody can control Bill.

2. I think McCain will pick Romney as his V. P. candidate. One theme McCain is pushing is that he is strong, and Obama is weak. Picking Romney helps McCain to portray himself as "the grown-up" in this race. With Obama having passed over his top competitor, McCain can say he was man enough to pick his.

3. I think McCain will win the election. As of today, McCain is 2 points ahead in the Gallop Poll, and he has been gaining steadily as we've gotten closer to the election. I expect Obama to get a bounce from his speech, because that is his strength, but that bounce won't last for two months. I think the concern about Obama's lack of experience is taking its toll, and we really are a center-right nation. McCain is a lot closer to that than Obama is. As people pay more attention to the campaign and become more aware of the candidate's positions, more people will turn to McCain. The one thing that could turn the election to Obama would be a huge turnout by African-Americans and young people. And that is a definite possibility.

Some things our critics don't get

2008-08-23T10:16:00.000-07:00

Rather than writing posts the last few days, I've been spending more time reading other blogs and leaving comments on them. As usual, there have been a number of posts involving "choice" and charter schools. I ended up spending a fair amount of time going back and forth with people on a post by Joanne Jacobs saying that blacks do better in charter schools. Anyone who has read a few of my posts knows that I am very big on the idea of giving teachers in public schools the authority to set reasonable standards for effort and behavior and then being able to enforce those standards. I responded to Joanne's post along those lines, and I also expressed my lack of enthusiasm for choice. As usual, I wasn't very popular. It's a little frustrating to me, because I really believe that there are some things that people who are critical of public education don't understand if they aren't teachers who spend much of their lives in classrooms. (And I know how popular saying that is!) This is not meant at all as an insult to those people. I'm not implying that they have no right to express their opinions on education issues, and I'm not implying being a teacher automatically makes my opinions more valid than theirs. Nivertheless, there are just things that I think it's impossible to completely get unless you actually live it. In any case, here are some of those things I think many who are critical of public schools don't completely understand.

1. Whenever the performance of the students in a school is poor, it is assumed that the teachers and administration in that school must be doing a lousy job. In some cases this might be completely true, in others it might be partially true, but it some other cases it might not be true at all. What people, who don't spend their time in classrooms, don't understand is how important the make-up of the students in a classroom is. I have posted about the positive effect that good students can have on each other, but obviously there are some other students who can have a very negative effect.

Not to brag (ahem, ahem), but...I have a good reputation as a teacher in my community. I have received a teacher of the year award and coach of the year awards, so I think I do a pretty good job at handling groups of young people. But I have six classes every year, and some years the differences in learning that is taking place in those different classes is enormous. How can that be when the same person is teaching all of them? The answer is in the make-up of the students in those different classes. Give me a classroom of kids with a reasonable amount of motivation, and kids--who are not a bunch of little angels--but show a reasonable amount of respect for authority, and I can be an impressive teacher. But throw me into a classroom with a few kids whose sole purpose in coming to school each day is to disrupt and see how much attention they can draw to themselves, and some others who couldn't care less about learning anything, and I doubt that I'll impress anyone. Although I've never taught in one of those "failing" inner-city schools, I suspect that they have more than their share of classrooms that are like that. When that's the case, I don't care who the teachers are or who the principal is, not much learning is going to take place.

This is why I am so concerned about charter schools and vouchers. Parents who don't care about their kids' education are not very likely to take advantage of those options. Parents who do care about education are, and their kids are the ones who are the most likely to be positive influences in their classrooms. Take a number of them out of a public school, and leave all the negative influences and pretty soon a decent school might become a bad one.

When there is a truly bad school, however, I can't argue against choice. I don't want to leave any child who really wants an education to be stuck in an impossible situation while we wait for my dream-reforms to happen.

2. I don't think non-teachers realize how few disruptive kids it takes to ruin a class. Having one truly disruptive kid in a class is a major headache, but if you just have three or four it can completely ruin a class. In his book, The Death of Common Sense, Philip K. Howard talked to teachers and was surprised to learn that in even those so-called "bad" schools most kids behaved pretty well. It is a small minority of kids who were ruining education for everyone.

3. Since the 1960s, a number of factors have made it much more difficult for public school teachers and principals to deal with unruly kids. The first move came when the Supreme Court ruled that education is a "property right" that can't be taken away from a student without due process of law. Shortly after that, the Court ruled that any school official can be sued if he or she is determined--by the courts, of course--to have violated a student's "property right." After that, laws were passed saying that students couldn't be punished for their disabilities, and this was followed by the number of kids in schools labeled EBD and ADHD skyrocketing. So if a school official wants to suspend or expel a student, or even kick him out of class; watch out! I'm not saying it's impossible to discipline public school students, but it definitely ain't easy.

Going along with 2 & 3 is the fact that disruptive kids tend to be those who have grown up testing limits, and many of them are definitely not stupid. They are constantly pushing to see how far they can go, so by the time they're in high school, they are experts at playing the system. To make matters worse, when some other students, who would normally be okay, see what disruptive kids get away with, they can also become major problems.

The bottom line to all this is that when teachers and principals are faced with disruptive kids, all the pressure is to put up with them. The damage that is done to the education of the students who are stuck in those classes becomes a secondary concern, if it is a concern at all.

4. This last one involves what I suspect is a misunderstanding about my motives. When I go back and forth with other bloggers on this subject, I always get the feeling that they think I'm an educational Neanderthal who wants to throw a bunch of kids out of school. Believe it or not, that is not the case.

I honestly believe that if teachers had the power to remove disruptive and apathetic kids from our classes, we wouldn't have to use it very often. I have great faith in students' ability to adapt and to live up to expectations. As I said earlier about disruptive students, they are expert at knowing how far they can go. Make it clear that in order to remain in a class or in a school that certain behavior standards must be met and certain effort standards must be met, and nearly every student would meet those standards.

I have been a teacher, but I have also been a coach. In high school athletics, coaches have the power that I believe teachers should have in their classrooms. If kids don't do what is expected, they will be shown the door. During my twenty years in Warroad, there has been a grand total of two kids who have been dismissed from our hockey teams because of attitude and discipline problems. I know that there are big differences between sports and academics, but there is no doubt in my mind that a major reason for that low number is that the kids in sports clearly understand that there are certain things that won't be tolerated.

I also don't want to give the impression that public school classrooms all around America are loaded with disruptive and apathetic kids. Jay Matthews wrote an article earlier this year in which he complained about the public schools that are poor in America, but he also said this:

Our best public schools are first-rate, producing more intense, involved, and creative A-plus students than our most prestigious colleges have room for. That is why less-known institutions such as Claremont McKenna, Rhodes, and Hampshire are drawing many freshmen just as smart as the ones at Princeton. The top 70 percent of U.S. public high schools are pretty good, certainly better than they have ever been...

Despite my harping about unruly students, most of my own classes are actually pretty good, but I definitely have had classes that were awful because of a few disruptive students. When that happens, it's frustrating because I feel like I should be able to do so much more about those kids than I can. There have been times when I have actually been embarrassed when I've seen kids in the hallway who wanted to learn something but were stuck in one of those classes. I have no doubt that in many of those so-called "failing" schools across the country, teachers are feeling the same frustrations I do, only a lot more often.

Public schools definitely have their problems, but I believe in them. I went to a public school, I've taught for 34 years in public schools, and my three sons went to public schools. They are all successful in their careers, and I've seen so many of our other graduates who have been as successful as they've wanted to be. My feelings are best summed up by one of the best quotes I've ever heard, and it comes from the late Albert Shanker, a teachers' union leader who was even admired by many conservatives:

We are about to create a system of choice and vouchers, so that ninety-eight percent of the kids who behave can go someplace and be safe. And we're going to leave the two percent who are violent and disruptive to take over the schools. Now, isn't it ridiculous to move ninety-eight percent of the kids, when all you have to do is move two or three percent of them and the other ninety-eight percent would be absolutely fine?

"It's all bullsh--!"

2008-08-19T10:28:00.000-07:00

When I taught in Mt. Iron, Minnesota early in my career, we had a wonderful female English teacher named Judy. Judy was thoroughly competent,caring, witty, and consistently demonstrated great common sense. One thing I remember about her is that whenever the latest educational fad came along--one of those many "great" ideas that was going to make education great and save the world--this very feminine and articulate woman would almost always respond by saying, "It's all bullsh__!"

When I read Joanne Jacobs post on the Dallas superintendents new reforms, I couldn't help but think of Judy.

If you haven't already read Joanne's post on this, the Dallas superintendent issued an edict which will "require teachers to accept late homework without penalty, ignore homework grades that lower a student’s semester grade and give retests to students who fail."

The superintendent responsible for this stroke of brilliance, Dr. Michael Hinojosa, is understandably concerned about the failure rate in Dallas.

Dr. Hinojosa cited new research that determined ninth-graders who are flunking two or more classes in their first six weeks of high school are almost doomed to become dropouts.

“Our mission is not to fail kids,” he said. “Our mission is to make sure they get it, and we believe that effort creates ability.”

But why are they failing? My experience, and I am confident in saying the experience of most other teachers, is that the great majority of high school kids who fail do so because their effort is miserable.

Dr. Hinrosa citing his research is like sighting research that people who have their wounds cleaned after shooting themselves in the foot are almost doomed to limp.

We need to find ways to get kids to try harder in school and to take their education more seriously. Lowering standards so that anyone can pass with just a minimal effort isn't the answer to our education problems.

Right now, I am reading Restless Giant, James T. Patterson's history of America from 1974-2000. Patterson talks a lot about American education in the book, and especially about the disparities between whites and minorities. In one section that I read today, he says this:

The educational difficulties of black and (to a lesser extent) Latino pupils in America in the 1990s were profoundly demoralizing. Reformers called for a variety of changes: eliminating racially based questions from standardized tests, spending more money per pupil on classroom education and tutoring for minority children, strengthening the hand of principals and superintendents, (emphasis is mine) improving training of teachers, lowering class sizes, raising expectations about what students could accomplish, (obviously Hinrosa doens't buy into that one) and--above all--raising academic standards, as measured by rigorous testing.

There are an awful lot of reform ideas in that paragraph, but as for as I can tell, they haven't had much of an effect. There is one idea, however, that to me, is noticeable in its absence. You'll notice that no one seems to have tried strengthening the hand of teachers in the classrooms.

Maybe it's time we give that one a shot.

Minnesota: 933 Failing Schools

2008-08-11T15:51:00.000-07:00

I have never been a No Child Left Behind hater--at least not to the extent that many others are. I'm not opposed to testing kids in our schools and allowing people to make comparisons based on the results. I think that can be motivating. Those comparisons have to be reasonable, however, and at this point that is definitely not the case with No Child Left Behind. That has to make one wonder about the motives of those who set the program up, and especially about anyone who isn't willing to change it.

Minnesota has one of the best academic records of any state in the nation, and Edina High School, just to the west of Minneapolis, was recently listed in Newsweek as one of the top 100 schools in the nation. But the Minneapolis Star/Tribune recently ran an article telling how Minnesota schools and Edina fared under the ridiculous standards set up by No Child Left Behind:

As predicted, dozens more Minnesota schools -- including nationally respected Edina High School -- failed to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) this year under No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The state Department of Education reports that 933 schools are now on the watch list based on statewide test scores. So why does that list keep growing in a state with one of the best academic achievement records in America?

Although I think the article unfairly blasts schools with "lower-performing kids," it also draws the obvious conclusion that there is something wrong with No Child Left Behind.

A signature Bush program, NCLB calls for all students to be proficient in reading and math by 2014. It also requires states to identify schools that miss the test benchmark. That bar is a moving target that keeps rising. Although state test scores improved slightly in 2008, the gains were not enough keep additional schools off the list.

The numbers are no surprise. A 2004 state legislative auditor's report projected that under current criteria nearly all Minnesota schools would fail to meet federal expectations in the next few years...

In 2005, 247 Minnesota schools landed on the list. Last year, the number rose to 729, and this year nearly half of the state's 1,900 schools fell short.

There are many who believe that No Child Left Behind is a conspiracy to bring about a full-scale voucher program for the nation or to completely privatize education in America. I have always been skeptical of conpiracy theories, but when the deck is so obviously stacked against public schools as they are with NCLB, you've got to be pretty thick-headed not to become a believer in this one.

Michelle Obama: Unpatriotic?

2008-06-14T16:07:00.000-07:00

I'm getting into politics on this one, so the first thing I should say is that right now, I'm leaning toward voting for John McCain, but I am nowhere near committed to him.

I'm posting this one as a history teacher, because this has very little to do with supporting public education. As I said, I'm leaning toward John McCain right now, but people like E. D. Hill, idiot anchorwoman extraordinaire for Fox News, could push me over to Obama. Ms. Hill referred to the fist bump that Barack Obama did with his wife as a possible "terrorist fist jab," after he had sewed up the Democratic nomination. I have been doing fist bumps with my hockey teams as they came out of locker rooms to hit the ice for the last several years. Silly me! I didn't know we were supporting terrorism when we did that.

Much has been made of Michelle Obama's statement in February that her husband's success in the primaries made her proud of her country for the first time. For the first time? Oh my goodness, that must mean that she isn't sufficiently patriotic! But then I began to think about that.

I am an Irish-American, and I think the United States is the best nation in the world. My ancestors came to America because their situation in Ireland was desperate, and they saw America as a land of opportunity. There is no question that the Irish faced discrimination for a time, but I never saw my father face any; he never told me about facing any (although he did go to a Ku Klux Klan march in Minneapolis to throw tomatoes at the Kluckers when he was a teenager), and I definitely never faced any.

Now let's look at America from Michelle Obama's perspective. Her ancestors were brought over here on slave ships, and they were slaves for over 200 years. Then, after slavery was ended, they faced discrimination of the worst kind for the next 100 years. Then, in the 1960s, laws were passed that for the first time made it possible for African-Americans to seek the American dream on equal terms with whites. That's great, but the man who led the movement that caused those laws to be passed was harassed for years by our FBI, and he ended up being murdered. Besides that, the Democratic party was responsible for those civil rights laws being passed and, in large part as a result of that, the Republican party, which opposed those laws, has won seven out of the last ten presidential elections. So just maybe, if Michelle Obama has not felt as proud of America as I have, I should be somewhat forgiving.

With all that being said, perhaps I should explain why I'm leaning toward John McCain. First of all, I've always liked McCain. I've liked him because he hasn't automatically spouted the party line like so many politicians. Barack Obama has talked about working bi-partisanly, but McCain has actually done it. Regarding the war in Iraq, McCain said from the beginning that we needed more troops. When the surge was proposed, and it was so politically correct to oppose it, McCain supported it, and it sounds to me like he turned out to be correct.

Barack Obama is a fantastic speaker, but I am very concerned about his lack of experience. He inspires me, but I'm just not sure that he has the substance to back up what he is saying. If you are upset that I'm leaning toward McCain, take heart. Media idiots like E. D. Hill still have more than four months to work on me. By the time they're done with me, there's at least a fifty-fifty chance I'll end up voting for Obama.

Longer school days? Longer school years?

2008-06-11T10:11:00.000-07:00

I have a great deal of respect for Joanne Jacobs, but she said something in a recent post about improving education for disadvantaged kids that I completely disagree with. Near the end of her post, Not By School Alone, Joanne says this:

I think providing quality K-12 schools for poor kids is job one; this includes a longer school day and year, making after-school programs and summer school less important.

The ideas of lengthening the school day and lengthening the school year have often been suggested as reforms for our K-12 education system. They were especially popular in the early 1990s when we were suffering through a recession, and Japan seemed to be kicking our economic backsides. Many talking heads on TV blamed our education system and pointed to the longer school year of the Japanese.

If our interest is in trying to get kids who are already learning to learn more, longer school days and years makes sense. But I don't think that's what we're talking about here. We are talking about kids whose achievement in school is miserable.

During the years that I've taught at the junior and senior high school levels, the basic reason for low achievement by students has been consistent: they don't try very hard. For the last decade I've been teaching a basic class, and I've seen another problem there. Kids who fall behind--and some of these kids are willing to try--end up being placed in classrooms with a large number of kids who won't try and won't behave. This makes it impossible for anyone to learn. Although I've never taught in an inner-city high school, I think it's a safe bet that there are a lot of classes with a lot of kids who don't try very hard. And I think it's a safe bet that the learning environment in many of those classes is hopeless.

If education for disadvantaged students is ever going to improve, those are the two issues that have to be addressed. Somehow we have to convince them to try, and we have to put them into classrooms with reasonably good learning enviroments. Having longer school days or years won't do either of those two things.

In praise of teachers?!?!

2008-06-07T03:50:00.000-07:00

Chester Finn, Jr. has a piece in Education Gadfly about teachers, and for me it brings about an unusual experience. Any time an "expert" writes something about education, especially about teachers, there will be something I think is completely off base. Finn's piece is different. While I might quibble with a couple of things, I can't argue that he's too far off the mark.

Finn's article is titled "In Praise of (and sympathy for) Teachers." Now, I don't think too many of us are looking for sympathy, but we are looking for respect, and Finn certainly gives us that in his piece.

June has come, the school year is ending, and it's time for a word in appreciation of teachers. Observing a focus group the other evening that pulled together a dozen AP teachers from a strong suburban school system, I was struck anew by their intelligence, their selflessness, their energy, their patience, the depth of their commitment to their work and their genuine concern for the well being and advancement of their youthful charges. Bravo for them and the many thousands of others like them without whom our schools could not function and would not produce even today's mixed results.

Finn is praising what he believes are good teachers, but he certainly doesn't argue that all teachers are good. While Finn shows no sympathy for teacher complaints about "tight-fisted legislators, mindless administrators, mean-spirited federal programs, incompetent, uncooperative parents, and unmotivated pupils," he at least concedes that there is a basis for "some of them." He then goes on to discuss what he sees as the six real problems that afflict good teachers today.

1. An absurd and antiquated compensation system that pays bad teachers as much as good ones and phys. ed. teachers as much as physics teachers. (A recent survey reminds us that math and science teachers are the most apt to leave due to meager pay--compared to what they can earn elsewhere.) That system is controlled by large bureaucracies instead of individual schools; is skewed to favor time-servers at the expense of newcomers; and is coupled to archaic, non-portable pension plans.

2. A personnel system designed for the 1930's that ignores the tenets of modern management and the need to empower individuals--both principals and teachers--to reach agreement on their job assignments, placements, retention and such. Instead it entrusts such matters to rulebooks, rigid seniority systems and (again) large bureaucracies. The same HR system is blind to modern career trajectories and weeps whenever anyone exits the classroom even though the typical pattern of today's young college graduates is to try one thing for a few years, then another and then another.

3. A dysfunctional training-and-licensure regimen that, on the one hand, makes it slow, expensive and arduous for eager would-be teachers to enter the public school classroom and, on the other hand, burdens them with useless courses while failing to impart core knowledge of their subjects and the most effective methods of conveying those subjects to children. Superimposed on this is so-called "professional development" that much of the time isn't worth the paper it's printed on, much less the money that's spent on it.

4. Schools that, despite much blather about "professional" educators, give teachers surprisingly little control over fundamental decisions about their work. Yes, it's still partly true that once the classroom door is closed, the teacher is queen of her domain. Yet that teacher often has little or no say about who is in her class; what textbooks will be used; the curricular scope and sequence; the quantity of homework (if any); the grading scale; how to communicate with parents and much more. At the same time, that "professional" may not even have her own classroom and desk and almost surely lacks her own work phone number and email address. (Okay, she has summers off, but not working isn't a mark of professionalism either.)

5. A host of forces (including, let's face it, teachers' own desire for smaller classes) have conspired to swell America's teaching workforce to three times its 1955 size even as student enrollments have risen by just 50 percent. Hence even though we're spending tons more money per pupil, teachers' pay has barely kept pace with inflation. We've rashly opted for more teachers rather than better-or better-compensated-teachers. Then we wonder why we're not getting platoons of the best and brightest to work in our public-school classrooms. Teachers--great ones, especially--should earn more, but that's destined not to happen, at least not to any appreciable degree, so long as most "new money" goes into hiring more people.

6. Finally, we've devised such narrow "accountability" systems for schools, and built those atop such shoddy standards and simple minded tests, that teachers may legitimately be forgiven for not wanting to "teach to" those tests and for feeling shackled and blocked from teaching things they love and yearn for their pupils to love, too. Mindless accountability arrangements foster mindless instruction and, in time, mindless, robotic instructors.

Although Finn talks about both, I think he overemphasizes the issue of teacher compensation and underemphasizes the issue of retention. It's possible that I look at it this way because of my experience. For most of my first fifteen years, I faced the very real possibility of being cut because of financial problems in the school district I was in. In fact, that's why I ended up moving to Warroad. I think most people who have ever faced the chopping block would agree that how high your salary is definitely drops on your list of priorities when you're never sure from year to year whether or not you're going to have a job. Young teachers having to face being cut, no matter how good they are, happens all the time, and it is a much bigger problem than who gets paid how much.

While we would all like to earn more money, I think good teachers tend to be less motivated by financial incentives than people who go into most other professions. Someone who becomes an insurance agent, for example, probably has making a lot of money as an important goal. People who want to be good teachers don't think that way. They go into teaching because they want to work with kids and do something worthwhile. Quite frankly, the teachers I've known who have been most interested in higher salaries usually haven't been very good teachers. Some of them end up going into administration. While raising salaries for the best teachers might bring a few talented people into the field, I don't think it would have the great effect that Finn and many others believe.

One thing that I think very few non-teachers understand is that there is great incentive in teaching to perform well because of the very nature of the job. There are few things more humiliating than to stand up in front of twenty-five to thirty adolescents and know you are bombing. That audience is not very forgiving. There are very few occupations I can think of that would be worse to be bad at than teaching. Maybe professional boxing.

Well, duh!

2008-06-01T03:06:00.000-07:00

Jay Greene's blog has a piece telling us that students involved in Milwaukee's voucher program graduate at a higher rate than those not in the program. Well, as Gomer Pyle once said, "Surprise, surprise!"

I suppose studies have to be done to establish facts no matter how obvious they are, but is it possible that any one could possibly even raise an eyebrow at this conclusion? Of course voucher students in a city like Milwaukee graduate at a higher rate than kids in the public school system. How could they not?

In my last post, I listed a number of my basic beliefs about public education, but there was nothing particularly profound there. Most of those beliefs are based on common sense that anyone with much contact with public education would be able to figure out.

I don't think too many people would argue with the proposition that children of parents who care about education will generally do better than those who don't, and that includes graduating at higher rates. It also seems obvious that parents who go to the trouble of enrolling their kids in a voucher program probably do so because they care about their kids education. If we put all those kids together in a private school setting where kids who don't try and don't behave can be kicked out, how could they possibly do worse?

Jay Greene, Sol Stern, and others have written books giving the impression that non-public schools do a better job than public schools because the teachers in those schools are wonderful people and there are no unions, whereas in public schools the teachers are lazy, greedy people, and everything is controlled by the unions. Well, there are other factors at work. If critics of public schools really want them to improve, and if they really want public schools to operate more like private schools, they might want to take a look at factors other than unions and the teachers who work in those schools.

What I believe: June, 2008

2008-05-18T13:30:00.000-07:00

About a year and a half ago, I wrote a post summing up my beliefs about public education. We are at the end of another school year, so I thought it would be a good time to update those beliefs. I wouldn't say there have been any big changes from what I believed two years ago, but writing posts, reading other blogs and comments and then responding to them have certainly affected my thoughts.
Here they are:

1. I believe education should be not be viewed as a right. The framers of the Constitution considered rights to be something coming from God that could not rightfully be taken away from people by government. They believed that government should protect people's rights, but none of the framers ever suggested that a right was something provided by the government. And even if someone looks at it that way, calling education a right is based on the idea that it can be given to everyone. Education can't be given to anyone.

2. The question then becomes whether or not it is a good idea for government to provide the opportunity for a free education for all the people. I believe the answer to this is an obvious yes!

3. I believe that public schools are doing a much better job than we are given credit for. I believe the best evidence of this is in the millions of public school students who have gone on to live productive lives.

4. I believe the most important factor in determining a student's performance is effort and not ability. I believe that student's who care about their education and try hard end up doing well, while those who don't care and don't try do poorly.

5. I believe too much of the blame for students who perform poorly is placed on the public schools themselves, and too little is placed on the parents of those students, the neighborhoods in which those students live, our culture, and especially the students themselves. (Public education critics view this as whining, but it's important, because as long as education reform ignores that and focuses solely on things going on inside the schools, any improvement is going to be limited.)

6. I believe that when education is a priority to the parents, the chances are good that the students will take their own education seriously. On the other hand, if parents don't make their kids' education a priority, the chances are that the kids won't either. (I recognize that there are exceptions to this, and that when parents care and the students don't, sometimes it is at least partially our fault.)

7. I believe one of the most important factors that determine the learning that takes place in a classroom is the effect that students have on other students. That means that if an average student is placed in a classroom with a lot of highly motivated students, that student will learn much more than if he or she is placed in a classroom with a number of apathetic or disruptive students. At the high school level, I believe this factor might be even more important than who the teacher is in that classroom.

8. I believe public education should not be compulsory. It is impossible to force someone to get an education. The person being educated has to want it. When we force people to be in school who don't want to be there, we are simply beating our heads against the wall when it comes to trying to educate them, and we are harming the education of others who are stuck in their classes.

9. I believe dropping out, by itself, is not a bad thing. In fact, in my experience, when students have dropped out, it has been a good thing. In the schools that I've worked in, the kids who have dropped out have consistently been those who made very little effort and/or behaved horribly. In other words, the dropouts that I've known weren't getting an education, and they were hurting the education of others. Obviously, in areas where there are forty percent dropout rates, there is a problem. But the problem is not happening when they drop out; the problem is whatever led up to that.

10. I believe those who say that "choice" (vouchers and charter schools) can make public schools better are either lying or dreaming. I believe vouchers and charter schools can improve education for some students. But I also believe that, while they do that, they will make education worse for others. Nevertheless, I believe that there some places where public schools have become so bad that vouchers are justified. I'm afraid that those schools have already become "holding cells," where it's nearly impossible for anyone to learn. Those schools certainly have some kids who do want to learn, and they should be able to go someplace where they'll have a reasonable chance to do that.

11. I believe that if "standards" and merit pay bring about improvement in public education, the improvement will be much less than their promoters hoped for.

12. I believe the most important reform we could make in public schools is to give teachers the power to remove disruptive and apathetic students from their classrooms. There would have to be safeguards to make sure that this power wasn't abused, but it should not involve lawyers and thousands of dollars to do it. Teachers should be given the power to remove kids, who have little interest in their own education and are hurting the education of their classmates, from class. I also believe those kids should be given the opportunity to come back if they ever have a change of heart and decide that they actually do want an education.

13. The next most important reform we could make would be to give principals the power to keep their best teachers, regardless of seniority, when cuts have to be made, and to fire teachers who are not doing their jobs effectively.

14. I believe that God is alive and well in public schools.

So, there you have it. If Barack Obama or John McCain want to give me a call, my number is 218-386-3569. If they're going to call they should keep in mind that I go to bed early, and please don't call during American Idol.

Wanted: Education policy entrepreneur with common sense

2008-05-17T10:05:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I complained about the propensity of those in power to screw things up when it comes to public education. Daniel Simms responded by saying this:

Dennis, this is what politicians do these days. That should be obvious. In defending public schools, even though I know you don't mean to, you are just giving aid and comfort to politicians, in their quest to increase their power and prestige over the rest of us.

I must admit that listening to what politicians say and seeing what legislators do about public education is discouraging. But it doesn't have to be this way. I have to believe that it's possible for democratic governments to make common sense decisions to improve public education.

The model that gives me hope is the Tax Reform Act of 1986. Economists told us that our tax code was ridiculous because it was so filled with loopholes, but political experts thought it would be impossible to change that. Every loophole had some interest group that supported it, and public opinion polls said that even middle class people would rather keep their loopholes than have income tax rates lowered. But lo and behold, what happened? Congress passed and President Reagan signed a common sense bill that lowered tax rates and got rid of most loopholes. It would be nice if that were the end of the story, but let's face it--it isn't. Tax policy since 1986 has consisted of the same crap as before, so once again we have a huge number of loopholes in the tax code. Nevertheless, what happened in 1986 shows that it is possible for common sense to triumph even when it seems politically impossible.

Two people were key in getting the 1986 tax law passed--Ronald Reagan, a Republican, and Senator Bill Bradley, a Democrat. What we need in education is a policy entrepreneur--someone who can stir up an apathetic public or an apathetic legislature by bringing attention to the stupidity that is going on to the point where something is actually done about it. Ideally, it would be someone in public office, but it doesn't have to be. Ralph Nader (not that I'm a fan of his) did serve as a successful policy entrepreneur for auto safety back in the 1970s.

Anybody who has read my blog a few times knows my position on this, but I'll state it again: teachers need to be given the power to remove disruptive and apathetic kids from their classrooms. One problem in finding someone to carry on this battle is that, despite what they say, the public really doesn't care that much about education, and I'm afraid that might be impossible for anyone to change. Education just doesn't have the sex appeal that some other issues do. Another problem is that neither political party is good for education. The Democrats are perfectly happy to throw money our way, but they have no common sense on the issue. The Democrats tend to be bleeding hearts who see kids who are destroying education for others as victims. Conservatives might hate public education, but the court decisions and policies that have damaged pubic education the most over the last forty years have come from liberals. George Bush isn't the first guy who wanted to leave no child behind. Republicans, on the other hand, say they are all for individual responsibility, so they would seem to have possibilities. The problem with them is that they hate the teachers' unions so badly that the only solutions they want to talk about are "choice" and merit pay.

There are people out there who want to improve education, like Bill Gates and some other rich guys, but they're all barking up the wrong trees. They also want to screw around with merit pay, and choice, and charter schools and things like that. They just don't understand that the biggest problem that we have in public education is that there are too many kids who want to wreck education for everyone else, and there's not much that teachers can do about them.

What we need is someone who is in politics, in the media, or in the entertainment world, who has some common sense, who believes in individual responsibility, and who wants to improve public education rather than destroy it. The one person I can think of who comes closest to meeting the criteria is Bill Cosby. Anyone have any other ideas???

Exactly what we don't need!

2008-05-11T16:07:00.000-07:00

Last week, our principal sent this little blurb he had received from the Minnesota Association of Secondary Principals. It is amazing how policy makers find ways to do exactly the wrong thing.

Late last night the K12 Omnibus Education Policy Committee concluded it's work...The conference committee report will now go to the respective floors of the House and Senate for passage and on to the Governor where it awaits an uncertain fate.

Here are the highlights:

The compulsory attendance and habitual truancy ages are raised to 18. (This provision's effective date is delayed until the 2011-2012 school year.) The Superintendent for St. Paul schools pushed this initiative. Our suggested amendments were not incorporated into the final provisions. We had proposed that districts could move kids to ALCs if they were failing their classes. The ALC's objected and the provision was removed. We proposed that if the principal and parents agreed and the student was 16-17 years old the student could be withdrawn. St. Paul didn't like this idea so it was not adopted. This became a high profile media issue. Privately, some superintendents view this as a revenue raiser. The argument goes that if these kids are kept in school, the district will receive the foundation aid revenue.

There's more, but that's the important part. I don't know anything about the St. Paul superintendent, but I have to assume that he has never been a high school teacher. I also have to wonder if he's ever talked to any. How in the world is forcing 16 and 17 year olds who have no desire to be in school to stay there? Does the stupidintendent have any idea how much damage will be done by forcing them on teachers trying to teach and classmates who want to learn? If I wanted to make education worse in Minnesota, I couldn't think of a more effective tactic.

As much as I disagree with my libertarian friends, boy, do they have a point. When it comes to education, it sure seems like policy makers in government have an uncanny ability to find ways to screw things up.

A strange complaint about public schools

2008-05-05T14:47:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning I sitting at my desk working, and I had The Journal Editorial Report on the TV. It isn't unusual for someone on their esteemed panel to take a shot at American education during the show, and sure enough, as they were about to close, Jason Riley threw out a little blurb about people not realizing how much they are spending on public education. Paul Gigot then responded with what was the weirdest complaint I've ever heard about public schools.

Jason, on your point, another thing you see in polls is that most Americans think that their public schools are actually doing very, very well. It is everybody else's public schools that are really rotten. And that's also one reason you just can't get a lot of support for education reform.

Sometimes the written word doesn't convey the exact message that comes across when you actually see the person say it, and this is one of those cases. The feeling I got while watching Gigot say this was that he thinks the people who think their public schools are "doing very, very well," are really stupid.

There are two points this brings to mind. The first one is that I have said a number of times that, despite the scorn of the elite, public schools are basically giving the public what it wants. Obviously, no school will make every single parent happy, but public schools across the nation are basically doing what their particular publics want them to. Whether Gigot likes it or not, and whether many teachers like it or not, academic excellence is not high on the list of goals that most parents have for their children.

My second point is that I wonder if there is any institution in America that is doing a worse job than the American press. They have succeeded in turning us into a negative, cynical people. Why is it that almost all institutions in America that get any amount of coverage by the press have poor public approval ratings? The president has a horrible public approval rating. Congress has an even worse public approval rating even though most people think their own particular congressmen are very good. Public education has a low public approval rating, even though people are happy with their own schools--much to the chagrin of snobs like Gigot.

What all of these institutions have in common is that the American public gets their information about them from the press. Is it possible that the problem here is that the information we get about all these institutions is unfairly negative? I don't want to see any of our public institutions whitewashed, but I would like to see them covered in a fair enough way so that people can make reasonable judgments about them. Quite frankly, I think our press is doing a lousy job of that. Maybe we need journalistic reform.

The market is not God!

2008-05-04T17:14:00.000-07:00

On a number of my posts, I have gotten comments from people who say they believe we shouldn't have public schools. Although I completely disagree with them, I respect them for their honesty. What galls me are those who don't have the guts to come out and say that, but instead seek to destroy public education by advocating "choice" through a full-scale voucher plan. They generally push their ideas by extolling the virtues of the market. To many of them, the market is God.

Last week, Jay Greene had a guest education basher on his blog named Matthew Ladner. Before pushing his "market" solution, Ladner throws his spears at public education.

Our education problems worsened despite the increased spending. Today, 38 percent of our 4th graders have failed to learn basic reading skills, and around a third of our high school students dropout of high school. As today’s dropouts are largely those students who failed to learn to read in elementary schools, tomorrow’s dropouts are already in the pipeline.

Last week Greene told us that our elementary school students were doing just fine, and now his buddy tells us that nearly forty percent of our fourth graders can't read. I'm not sure where he's getting that statistic from, but I would guess it might be the same place as his "around a third of our high school students dropped out of high school." I've seen that statistic before, and I know that it's widely disputed, but Ladner presents it as fact.

Ladner's solution to all of our problems, of course, is the market.

Our students need a market for K-12 schools. The market mechanism rewards success and either improves or eliminates failure. This has been sorely lacking in the past, and will be increasingly beneficial in the future. The biggest winners will be those suffering most under the status-quo...

A market system will embrace and replicate reforms which work, and discard those that fail to produce. A top-down political system has failed to perform this task. Where bureaucrats and politicians have failed miserably, however, a market of parents pursuing the interests of their children will succeed in driving progress.

You know, if I was one of the less fortunate in our society, I think I might be a little bit suspicious of someone who tells me the market (genuflect, please) is going to be my savior. I have no doubt that a full-fledged voucher system would be a heckuva good deal for all those affluent people who are already sending their kids to private schools, but I'm not sure about people like the working poor. I mean they aren't exactly thriving under our market-based health care system.

But Ladner cares about poor people--he really does.

Charter school operators such as KIPP, Yes Academies and Amistad have proven definitively that low-income inner city children can learn at an accelerated pace, and can even outperform our complacent suburban schools and attend elite universities. These innovators face huge political and practical obstacles in making these schools more widely available, but don’t bet against them. Already, they have settled the question of whether we must settle for today’s failed status quo: we don’t. Our students can learn. We adults simply have to learn how to follow the example of those who are getting the job done.

We cannot feel satisfied with a system that watches helplessly as a third of pupils drop out before graduation each year. We can do much better. The key lies in matching disadvantaged students with high quality teachers and school leaders. Parental choice programs help to achieve this by providing new education delivery methods.

Even though I don't teach in an inner-city school, I find Ladner's inference that the kids in those schools do poorly because of poor quality teachers insulting. People like him always assume that if schools aren't doing well, it's the teachers' fault. What he is apparently too dense to realize is that when you take all the kids in an area that suffers from a lot of social problems, a number of those kids aren't going to give a rip about education, and that's going to make it much more difficult for anyone to learn regardless of the quality of the teachers.

I have no doubt that there are kids in the inner-cities who do want to learn with parents to whom education is important. And it doesn't surprise me one bit that if you put those kids together, and get them away from those who don't care, that they will do wonderfully. And that's great! But if we ever go to a full-fledged voucher system, and we take more an more of those kids who care about education out of the public schools, what is going to be left? How in the world are those kids going to learn anything? That market system will probably work about as well for those people as our heath care system does for those who can't afford insurance.

I do wan't to make a couple of things clear before I close this off. First of all, I am not a socialist. Heck, I'm not even a liberal Democrat. I am grateful that a market system is at the heart of our economy in the United States, because I think for most things, a market system works better than anything else. It isn't perfect; but it beats the alternatives. But the market is not God. The second thing is that I would love just once to hear one of those education market-thumping revival preachers say, "Let's have real competition. Let's have a voucher system, but let's also give public school teachers and principals the same power to deal with disruptive and apathetic students as private schools have." Do you think any one of those "experts" who say they are so concerned about education and so concerned about poor and middle class people will ever say that? Don't hold your breath.

It's the students, stupid!

2008-04-26T15:10:00.000-07:00

During the 1992 presidential campaign, which took place during the end of a recession, Bill Clinton's team had a saying: "It's the economy stupid!" The people in that successful campaign wanted to remind each other over and over that the way to win the presidency was to focus on the economy, the economy, and the economy some more. When I hear people, especially people who are considered experts, giving us their brilliant ideas as to how we can fix the problems of education in America, I want to shout out to them, "It's the students, stupid!"

When "the experts" bemoan the state of American education, there is no more attractive target for their attacks than teachers. In February, Time Magazine ran a cover story titled, "How To Make Better Teachers," complete with information on how other nations like Finland do it. The very clear implication of articles like this is that American education would be just fine if only our teachers were better.

Jay P. Greene, a consistent critic of American public schools, now has a blog, and you'll never guess what he has posted about! Surprise, surprise! Greene has posted about the need to get better teachers into our schools. Argh!!!

Now let me make it clear that I am all for doing everything we can to get the best teachers we can, and I have had a number of posts dealing with how I think we can do that. I am also very open to the idea that many of the methods and ideas that have been promoted by education schools and university high brows have been questionable to say the least. But anybody who spouts the theory that the biggest problem we have in education is that we don't have good enough people doing the teaching is barking up the wrong tree.

Greene points to something going on in American education that should give him a clue about where many of our problems lie:

A new report from the McKinsey Company examines education systems from around the world, revealing some of the central problems of the American system in the process. In international examinations of student proficiency in mathematics and science, American elementary students score fairly well. American middle school students slip to the middle of the pack while American high school students rank near the bottom, behind all of our major Asian and European competitors.

Obviously, something is wrong.

Okay, so our kids do fine in the lower grades, and get worse as they get older. It would be reasonable to ask what is happening at the upper grades that isn't happening at the lower grades to cause so many kids to do so poorly. But Greene never asks that question. Instead he jumps to the conclusion that all American teachers are lousy:

The McKinsey report emphasizes the crucial nature of recruiting high quality teachers. Successful school systems recruit their teachers from upper tier of university academic achievers. A South Korean official summarized this practice succinctly “The quality of a school system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.”

South Korea in fact engages in remarkably different education practices when compared to the United States. South Korea spends less per pupil, but pays their teachers more. This feat is accomplished through larger average class sizes- which are approximately twice as large in South Korea than in the United States.

Korean teachers however are paid much better and enjoy greater professional prestige than their American counterparts. The McKinsey report cites data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development showing that a 15 year veteran teachers in South Korea is paid an average of 2.5 times GDP per capita. In America, the average is a little more than 1 times GDP per capita.

Higher pay and prestige allows South Korea to recruit teachers from those in the top 5 percent of their university graduating classes. Korean schools have many applicants for every teaching job. Meanwhile, in the United States, the low upper cap on the pay fails to attract many of our brightest and most ambitious students. American schools on average recruit teachers from the bottom third of American university graduates.

Additionally, American schools once had a near monopoly on employing bright university educated women. That monopoly has since retired to the dustbin of history and will not be returning. Our national preoccupation with lowering average class size has also impacted lowered the average effectiveness of the teachers we’ve hired. The average class size in American schools has plummeted since the baby-boomers went through the system, but our test scores have remained flat.

Americans have been obsessed with lowering class size, while Korea has emphasized getting the brightest students possible into the classroom while thinking nothing of packing 40 or more children in a classroom. Who made the right choice?

This is a prime example of an expert who doesn't have a clue because he's never actually had to teach in an American public school classroom. It is so frustrating because so many people take guys like this seriously.

Now, I'm not going to object to higher salaries for teachers, but I have a question for Jay. If the heart of American education problems is lousy teachers, then why do our third graders do well? Do all of our "smart" teachers flock to the early elementary grades? Do all of our "stupid" teachers flock to the high schools? It seems to me that Greene doesn't even attempt to explain this, so let's take a look at it.

The biggest difference between kids in the early grades and in high school is the way they react to adults compared to the way they react to their peers. Pleasing their parents, and pleasing what amounts to be their surrogate parents, in other words, their teachers, is very important to kids in kindergarten and kids in the first, second, and third grades. Pleasing their peers becomes increasingly important as they get older. By the time they are in high school, peer relationships dominate.

Greene uses South Korea as his example. I can't claim to be an expert on South Korean education, but let me take a couple of guesses. My guess is that South Korea does not treat a student's education as a property right that can't be taken away without due process of law. I would also guess that there aren't many teachers and administrators in South Korean schools that would ever have to worry about being sued if they suspended a student for too long, or disciplined the student in some other way.

Well, that is the way things are in American schools, and believe me, it takes its toll on education here. It begins to make a noticeable difference when kids are in middle school, and by high school when the most difficult kids in our schools have learned what they can get away with, and when students are much more concerned about how their peers see them than how their teachers do, the effects are profound. Without ever having seen a South Korean high school, I have no doubt that teachers have much more authority and order in their classrooms, and I doubt very much that it's because they are superior people to American high school teachers.

I think I have as good a reputation as any teacher in our school, but there was one class I had this year that was nearly impossible to manage, because there were so many kids who were disruptive, and there were so many kids who lacked any motivation at all. I don't care who the teacher is, learning is going to suffer in such a class. I would challenge any teacher from South Korea, Finland, or anywhere else to do a better job with that class than I did.

Jay Greene scoffs at the importance of class size, and you know what? When the kids in a class are motivated and respectful, he's right. The best regular American History class I ever had was one of the largest classes I had ever had up until that time. Most of the students had wonderful attitudes, and the few who didn't were influenced for the better by the many who did. I have also had lousy classes that were relatively small, because there were a few disruptive kids in them. But in the great majority of classroom situations in America, whether Greene understands it or not, there is simply no question about it--a teacher can be more effective when a class is smaller.

I have all of our school's sophomores in American History. This year I have the one nightmare class I referred to earlier, two other regular classes that are below average in performance and behavior, and one basic class. The basic class has actually been the most enjoyable of the bunch for me. The sophomore class this year is the worst class of students, as a whole, that I've had during my thirty-four year teaching career. I've actually grown to like almost all of the kids as the year has gone by, but I've never been so frustrated so often during a year. I'm sure there is more than one reason for this, but as I've tried to find out why this is, one thing has struck me. Because of cuts our school district has been forced to make, these kids have been stuck in large classes all the way up. Don't try telling me that class sizes don't make a difference. Somebody needs to tell Jay Greene that this isn't South Korea.

Here's one thing wrong with education in America

2008-04-22T17:00:00.000-07:00

Okay, I admit it. I'm probably being a little touchy. This morning I got this email from what I consider to be a very well meaning group, The Forum for Education and Democracy. The email was announcing the release of something called "Democracy at Risk: The Need for a New Federal Role in Education Policy." What bothered me was its list of featured guests.

The Honorable George Miller, Chairman of the Committee on Education & Labor, U.S. House of Representatives (invited)

Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education, Stanford University;

John Deasy, superintendent, Prince George's County Public Schools;

Milton Goldberg, distinguished senior fellow, Education Commission of the States and former staff director for the commission that produced A Nation at Risk;

Peter McWalters, Rhode Island Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education;

Deborah Meier, senior scholar, New York University Steinhardt School of Education;

Pedro Noguera, professor, New York University Steinhardt School of Education;

Wendy D. Puriefoy, president, Public Education Network;

Sharon Robinson, president and CEO, American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education; and

George Wood, executive director, The Forum for Education and Democracy, and principal of Federal Hocking High School and Middle School.

As a teacher, I think that one major thing wrong in education is that so many policies--many of them well-meaning--have been imposed on us by people who are considered "experts," but who actually know very little or nothing about what really goes on in a classroom. Wouldn't it have been a good idea to include at least one classroom teacher in a group called together to respond to another new plan for education policy in America?

Another education basher misses the mark

2008-04-16T19:21:00.000-07:00

Joanne Jacobs did a piece the other day on another bashing of our education system. The bashing was a post by John Leo, and mercifully, this one seemed to focus more on college than it did in K-12. The post featured what was supposed to be a test for eighth graders in 1895, and it was compared to what today's college students don't know.

Here is some of what was on the "eighth grade" test:

Grammar (Time, one hour)

1. Give nine rules for the use of capital letters.
2. Name the parts of speech and define those that have no modifications.
3. Define verse, stanza and paragraph
4. What are the principal parts of a verb? Give principal parts of 'lie', 'play', and 'run.'
5. Define case; illustrate each case.
6. What is punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of punctuation.
7 - 10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.

U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)

1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus .
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas .
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton , Bell , Lincoln , Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, and 1865.

And here is how dumb young people are today: (This originally comes from an essay by Ted Gup in The Chronicle of Higher Education.)

"Nearly half of a recent class could not name a single country that bordered Israel. In an introductory journalism class, 11 of 18 students could not name what country Kabul was in, although we have been at war there for half a decade. Last fall only one in 21 students could name the U.S. secretary of defense. Given a list of four countries - China, Cuba, India, and Japan - not one of those same 21 students could identify India and Japan as democracies. Their grasp of history was little better. The question of when the Civil War was fought invited an array of responses - half a dozen were off by a decade or more. Some students thought that Islam was the principal religion of South America, that Roe v. Wade was about slavery, that 50 justices sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, that the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1975."

There were a couple of problems with Leo's bashing attempts, however. First of all, the eighth grade test turned out to be either a complete hoax or just dishonest. (Joanne reported that it's a hoax; a commenter on Leo's post said that it really was an eighth grade test from 1895, but hardly any of the eighth graders passed it.) The other problem is that by comparing the lack of social studies knowledge the college students demonstrated with any test, real or imaginary, it's clear that he completely misses the point.

The problem is not that young people today can't do well on a particular social studies test that they can study for. The problem is that they can't answer the same questions just a few months, or even a few weeks, after they've taken that test. The reason? They don't care! They don't care what countries border Israel, they don't care about Afghanistan, and they don't about the Civil War.

Do I care that kids don't care? Absolutely. I do everything I can to try to get my kids to care about the stuff I teach, and I know I'm not alone. But let's face it; we are not living in a culture that is conducive to getting young people to care about what has happened in history and what is happening in societies outside their own. But give them a test on TV, DVDs, video games, how to text, or how to use any other of the latest high tech gadgets, and they will dazzle us.

How in touch are our unions?

2008-04-12T06:00:00.000-07:00

I am not anti-union. I want to make that clear before I say anything else. I certainly don't feel like I'm overpaid, but I know that I would be getting paid a lot less, and my life would be a lot less comfortable if there were no such things as unions. Nevertheless, I sometimes wonder how in touch our teachers' unions are with teachers.

I was reminded of that when I checked out NYC Educator's blog next week. The post dealt with an article in Village Voice about Randi Weingarten, the president of the United Federation of Teachers.

This is what the Village Voice said about the experience that this teachers' union president actually has as a teacher:

[Barton claimed] she "taught, sometimes full time, sometimes part time, at Clara Barton High School for six years." Actually, records reviewed by the Voice indicate that she taught 122 days as a per diem teacher from September 1991 through June 1994, roughly one in four days. She then did what she told the Voice was her only full-time term in the fall semester of 1994, followed by 33 days as a per diem teacher in the spring of 1995.

Strangely, while she told the Voice she was a per diem for the 1995-96 and 1996-97 school years, her records list her as a full-time teacher. Because she was credited with the required two years of full-time service she doesn't even claim she performed, she was given a permanent certificate in September 1996. She has been on union leave since 1997, accumulating a total of nine years of pensionable city time though she only did one semester of full-time teaching.

I have no idea what the statistics are on this, but I wonder how extensive the actual teaching experience is of all the leaders of of our teachers' unions and how recent that experience is. I believe this matters.

After all, I know how I am. I've found that even when I get away from teaching for a couple of months, I start to forget. There have been times when I've gotten a "great idea" for an activity or adding something to my curriculum in August, and then when I go to implement it, I suddenly realize that there is something about the actual classroom situation that I had forgotten to take into consideration. My "great idea" either fails miserably or has to be altered considerably.

The point is that as soon as you stop being in the classroom regularly, you lose touch, and so the things that are important to actual classroom teachers might not be the things that are important to our union leaders. Two issues come to mind on this. First of all, seniority and tenure. Our unions have historically fought tooth and nail to protect those, and while I think most teachers support them, I've found that it is by no means unanimous. Many young teachers certainly aren't big on it, since they end up being the ones who get cut during tough financial times regardless of how good a job they do. Some of those young teachers have parents who are still teaching, so they now feel much more personally the unfairness of that, and many good teachers, regardless of their age, don't see tenure and seniority as being important to them. I must admit, however, that there are also good teachers who do strongly believe in tenure and seniority. In any case, I think it's fair to say that tenure and seniority is a much higher priority to the leaders of our unions than it is to teachers as a whole.

On the other hand, I've talked to very few teachers who haven't agreed that we need more ability to remove certain kids from our classrooms. Ask them if this would improve education, and the answer will be something like, "Well, duh!" But our unions have done virtually nothing about that. I'd guess that if I wasn't in the classroom anymore, maybe I wouldn't care about that either.

I believe that most teachers really do want to see their schools improve, but there are very few people outside of teaching who see our unions as being a positive force in public education. In fact, a number of books and articles have been written by people who insist that teachers' unions are what's wrong with it. Perhaps if our unions would get more in touch with what teachers really want, that could be turned around.

The effect of kids on kids

2008-04-07T16:42:00.000-07:00

It would be fair to say that there are a few themes that recur over and over again on this blog. One of those themes is the effect that students have on other students. I hammer away at that so much because I think it might be the single most important factor in the education that takes place at the high school level--even more important than the quality of the teachers--yet it is completely ignored by reformers and policy makers.

Usually when I write about this topic I harp on the destructive effects that disruptive and apathetic kids can have on a classroom. I think that's terribly important, but I don't write enough about the positive effects that good students have. Well, here are updated stories about two former students of mine who demonstrate the wonderful effect that good students can have on other students. I originally ran them as separate posts in June of 2006. One reason I'm running them again now is because I think I've got some readers that I didn't have back then. But the other reason is that the star of the first story, T. J. Oshie, will be in the national spotlight this week. The story about T. J. tells how a group of students can help direct an individual student in the right direction, and the second story tells how an individual student can have a profound effect on an entire class.

T. J. OSHIE AND THE POWER OF PEERS

This is T. J. Oshie. This week T. J. will be playing for the University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux in the Final Four of the NCAA Hockey Tournament. T. J. was one of the captains of Warroad's 2005 state championship team, and he is the most talented hockey player I have ever coached. Because of his accomplishments in high school, he earned a full scholarship to UND, and he was a first round draft choice by the St. Louis Blues of the National Hockey League.

In addition to his wonderful talent, T. J. is one of the most enjoyable kids I've ever had the opportunity to work with. Many of our hockey practices at Warroad were grueling, but I've never seen anyone work so hard, yet have a smile on his face nearly all of the time while doing it. The spirit of joy that he brings to the game is contagious, and he boosts the morale of any team he plays on. But T. J. is also a classic example of what having peers who are good students can do for an individual.

T. J. moved with his dad to Warroad from the state of Washington at the beginning of his sophomore year. I had him in my American History class, and he was not a good student. His effort was rarely better than mediocre, and I put him on our school's scholastic ineligibility list a number of times. If he'd have kept going the way he started at our school, I firmly believe that he'd have never been able to play hockey at a college.

But T. J. was very lucky because he came to our school at exactly the right time. T. J.'s number one love was hockey, and it would be the hockey players in his class--the class of 2005--who he would end up spending much of his time with. It just so happens that this group of hockey players were not just good athletes; they were an exceptional group of students.

Here is a picture that this group of hockey players had taken during their senior year. In order to avoid confusion and make my point, as well as to shorten things up a bit, I will only go through the players in the front row. I want to point out that if I say that a student was on the A honor roll, I mean that he was consistently on it, and not just for one or two marking periods.

On the far left is Kyle Hardwick. He was a defenseman, president of the senior class, and an A honor roll student. Kyle is now going to school and playing hockey at Bemidji State University. Next to him is Josh Brodeen, who was T. J.'s right wing, and a B honor roll student. He is now a student at UND. Then, Eric Olimb, a defenseman, T. J.'s best friend, and an A honor roll student. Eric is now going to school and playing hockey at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. Next is Mark Thiele, our goalie, and an A honor roll student, who is now attending University of Minnesota-Duluth. Next is T. J., then David Larson who was a defenseman and a B honor roll student. David is now a student and hockey player at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. Next is Andy Brandt who was our third line center and a B honor roll student. Andy is now in our armed forces. Finally, on the far right is Ben Bengtson, T. J.'s left wing and an A honor roll student. He also is a student and hockey player at Wisconsin-Stout.

Believe me, our hockey players usually don't get grades like this (I wish they did!), but this was a very special class. These are the kids that T. J. would be hanging around with for three years, and when you hang around with kids like this, good things happen. So by the time this picture was taken in January of 2005, T. J., too, was a member of the A honor roll. Qualifying academically at UND never became an issue.

The one who deserves the most credit for T. J.'s success is T. J., himself. He is a young man who is very human and makes mistakes like the rest of us, but what talent, what personality, what a work ethic, and what character he has! And when you have big hopes and big dreams, it sure helps to have great friends to help you along. That is something T. J. was definitely blessed with.

After the NCAA hockey tournament is over, it is expected that T. J. will sign a contract with the Blues, and he will make more money in one year than I've made in my whole life. When that happens, will I be jealous? Heck no! In fact, I couldn't be happier and prouder. T. J. could have signed with the Blues a year ago, but he turned down all that money because he wanted to go back to UND and try to win the national championship with his friends. He is that kind of person.

A SOPHOMORE NAMED NICK: THE POWER OF ONE GOOD STUDENT
T. J. Oshie's story tells how a group of good students can affect an individual. But is it possible for an individual student to have a significant influence on a class? The answer is a resounding, "Yes!" Having Nick in my class taught me that lesson very well.

Class discussion is an important part of almost any social studies class. There is nothing like a good class discussion to make otherwise dry material meaningful to high school students. But there have been times when I've conducted class discussions on the same subject on the same day, and gotten completely different results in different classes. In one hour, there will be a number of kids who jump into the discussion with both feet, and my most difficult task is to keep the kids from interrupting each other. Then, in the next class, it might be like pulling teeth just to get a few kids to say, "Yeh," "Nope," or the ever popular, "I dunno." The difference in the class might be made by only three of four students, and sometimes it can be just one.

Like T. J. Oshie and his friends, Nick was a member of the Warroad High School Class of 2005 (Yes, that was quite a class!), so I had him in one of my American History classes six years ago. Nick was a big, bright, good-natured young kid, and I've never had a student who was better in class discussions. Every teacher knows what it's like to have kids walk into class and say, "Do we have to do this again?" when they find out what is planned for the day. Teachers in our school never had to worry about hearing that when Nick bounded into class. In fact, any day I had class discussions planned, I could count on hearing him say something like, "I love these!" As a teacher, I'm here to tell you that makes you feel pretty good.

Nick loved to laugh and he loved to argue, and he was one of those rare teenagers who could get himself to really care about things that happened 100 or 200 years ago. You want to talk about whether or not we should have gone to war with Britain in 1812? Nick could get fired up about it. Better yet, he could get other kids fired up about it. When Nick was in my class he would literally goad other students into getting involved. As a result, his class consistently had the best discussions of any of the American History classes that I had that year. There were a number of times that class would argue right up until the bell rang and then they'd continue the argument in their later classes. Some of the other teachers didn't appreciate it, but I sure felt good about it. Nick was a very special student.

I am the sophomore class advisor, and one morning in December, our principal, Bill Kirkeby, called me out to the hallway from my first hour class. He said that we were going to have to call all of our sophomores into our mini-theatre to meet with them. I asked him why, and he replied that he was going to have to tell the sophomores that Nick had died. When his father had gone to his room to wake him up in the morning, he thought it was strange that Nick's reading light was still on. He had suffered an aneurysm sometime shortly after going to bed.

Obviously, this was a terrible personal tragedy for Nick's family and many friends. His funeral was held in our gymnasium, and the next month was a very emotional period in our school. Mention Nick's name any time during the rest of the year, and some girls in my classes would break into tears. The sophomores on our hockey team had his initials pasted on the back of their helmets, and players on our other athletic teams did similar things. But besides the personal tragedy, Nick's death was also a real blow to the education that took place in our school. He was not just missed because everyone liked him so much and because of his fantastic personality; he was also missed because of the contribution he made in every class he had attended.

My American History class that he had been in was never the same. It was still a good class, but it was never again what it had been when Nick was there. I can still picture in my mind students who took part in almost every discussion when Nick was there, but almost never got involved after he was gone. Our discussions in that class were just never able to take off the way they had before, because Nick was no longer there to get his friends going.

Do good students make a difference in the learning of their classmates? You bet they do. Nick was a student who his classmates and I will never forget.

Teacher Tenure

2008-04-05T13:25:00.000-07:00

Warning! A lot of teachers are going to disagree with me on this one.
Last week NYC Educator had a post called The Tenure Question. He began it this way:

I recently wrote about a colleague who told me a change in venue brought his Regents passing rate from about 30% to a much more respectable 90%. He claims he did not at all change his teaching methods, but his new audience was simply much more receptive. Was he a bad teacher at the previous locale? You could perhaps conclude that, but his 32% passing rate was the highest in his old school.

Do his new passing rates make him a great teacher? Not according to him. He claims to be the same teacher he was then, albeit a little older.

Now NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is fighting tooth and nail for the right to be able to grant or deny tenure on the basis of test scores. How do you do that fairly when a simple relocation produces such a radical change in results?

NYC Teacher's story illustrates why so many teachers see tenure as being so important, and it also shows why we get very nervous about being judged by our students' tests. I am no fan of our tenure and seniority systems, but replacing them with a testing system is a horrible idea. If my salary and employment were going to be based on the performance of the sophomore class that I had in 2002-03, move over Bill Gates. (That's an exaggeration.) But if it's going to be based on the performance of my sixth hour class this year, move over all you guys on the unemployment line. (And that's not an exaggeration.)

The best analogy I can give for this involves my hockey coaching. I am the only person in Minnesota high school hockey history to have been a head coach for a team that has gone winless, and then also for a team that has gone undefeated. In 1980 I coached a team in Mt. Iron, Minnesota that went 0-17, but it was not because I was a lousy coach. We had a very young team, and we were one of only a handful of teams in the state that had to practice outside. In 2005, I was the co-head coach of a team that went 29-0-2 and won the Minnesota Class A Championship, and although I think I did a pretty good job, that didn't happen because I was a great coach. We were loaded with talent, and we had one of the best practice situations in the state. There are many teachers throughout the nation who are dealing with situations in their classrooms that are at least as challenging as what I faced as a hockey coach in 1980, and they don't necessarily deserve to be fired. There are also some teachers who have classroom situations that are as wonderful as the one I had as a hockey coach in 2005, and they don't necessarily deserve merit pay. The teacher NYC Teacher talks about makes that point very well.

Nevertheless, that does not make me an advocate of our tenure and seniority systems. Later in his post, NYC Educator argues that if the city of New York has been sloppy about who it grants tenure to, that should be the city's tough luck, and the tenure system should be honored:

Tenure can and should be enforced. If the city fails to identify those who don't deserve it, that's plainly the city's fault. If the city chooses to hire based on college credits, or the ability to meet whatever reduced standard it's negotiated with Albany, that's the city's fault too. If the city chooses to hire through bus ads, 800 numbers, intergalactic recruitment schemes, or the capacity to draw breath, that's on them as well.

Here is where NYC Educator and I part ways. Part of this is probably due to our different locations. I work in a small school district, so I know and like nearly all of our administrators, and I am at least acquainted with most of our school board members. NYC Educator, on the other hand, works in a system that might be the mother of all bureaucracies.

That being said, I don't think teachers should be protected by tenure and seniority systems. NYC Educator says the the great majority of teachers are competent, and I agree with him. But as he acknowledges, there are teachers who have managed to get tenure who are awful. It has to be much easier to get rid of those teachers than it is now. No kids should have to be stuck with them, and they give all teachers a black eye. As one former teacher, who later became the chairman of the school board in a large suburban district in the Twin Cities area, said to me, "As long as teachers have tenure, the profession will never get any respect." I think there is a great deal of truth in that statement.

There are two major problems that I see in our tenure and seniority systems. One problem is that some teachers become lazy as they gain seniority. They may not become "incompetent," but they quit working as hard as the should and they quit being as good as they should. Teachers, as a whole, are probably more altruistic in their motivation than most other employees, but we certainly are not immune from self-interest and laziness.

The second major problem is the one that I see as the worst. When cuts have to be made, as happens at one time or another in so many school districts, the least senior teachers are the ones that have to go. Sometimes those younger teachers are the best in the school. Both of the school districts I've worked in have gone through periods when many cuts had to be made, and I've seen too many outstanding young teachers forced out the door, while teachers who weren't nearly as good and hard-working as them stayed. That is a tragedy.

The answer to this problem, however, is not to make decisions about who to retain by using tests. There has to be some human judgement. About a year-and-a-half ago, I wrote a post dealing with how I think teachers should be paid and retained. In that post, I said that this should be the job of the school principal, but there were teachers who responded to that by pointing out that in some larger schools the principals are clueless about the performance of individual teachers. That may be true, but then it should still be the job of some person, probably an administrator.

Would politics enter the picture if we did this? Of course. But all this would do is to put teachers in the same boat as millions of employees of private companies. I have two sons who work for private companies that have gone through periods in which they had to lay off employees. My sons had to impress their bosses enough so that they got to stay. I think teachers should have to do the same thing. Granted, this is a very imperfect system, but it would be hard to find a worse one than the one we've got now. Basing those decisions on how our students do on tests, however, comes darned close.

Conferences: Who should be saying thank you?

2008-04-03T17:36:00.000-07:00

We had our final conferences of the year last week, and there is something I've started to do at them the last couple of years that I had never done before. And I should have been doing it all along.

There are some students who are an absolute pleasure to have in class. They are conscientious, they are polite, they always seem to have smiles on their faces, and they are often a very positive influence on other kids in their classes. I have one sophomore this year who is the youngest of four children. I have had them all, and every one of them has been like that. It seems pretty obvious that parents of kids like this must be doing something very right.

It is consistently the parents of kids like this who show up for conferences, and then at the end, they will frequently thank me for all I have done. They thank me? Shouldn't I be the one thanking them? I finally figured that out, and so now I thank those parents for having such great kids and trusting our school with them. Parents always look so surprised when I do that, but why should they be?

I don't think it's ever been harder to be a parent than it is today. There are a myriad of influences coming from our society that work against what any good parent wants for their kids. Yet, they manage to overcome all of it. And if my blog has proven anything the last few weeks, it's that good parents don't have to send their kids to public schools. There ARE other options. So if you teach in a public school, the next time you see parents of one of those great kids that make teaching so rewarding, remember who is the one who should be saying, "Thank you!"

I'm no fan of vouchers, but......

2008-04-01T17:32:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I went to Education Wonks and found he had done a post on an incredibly depressing column by Colbert King about a public school in Washington, D.C..

"Security at Wilson High to Be Tightened" announced a headline in The Post's March 21 Metro section. More stringent measures were being put in place after 13 students were arrested because of two fights that week, the story said.

I first visited Woodrow Wilson High School 52 years ago as a 155-pound guard on Dunbar High School's football team. We played the Wilson Tigers to a 13-13 tie. Back then, student clashes were largely governed by rules and referees and limited to the athletic field.

Today, they play war in the cafeteria.

To reduce the violence, D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee wrote in a letter to parents that when Wilson students return from spring break on Monday, they will stay in their classrooms for lunch. Rhee told me in an interview Wednesday that the "classroom lunch" will last for two days "while the school finalizes plans for a new lunch structure."

How did the District's once premier high school end up like this? It didn't happen overnight. And Wilson's sad state shouldn't surprise the city's powers.

On March 1, Mai Abdul Rahman, the mother of a Wilson student, sent Rhee an e-mail laying bare the problem...

Rahman described an assault on her son that occurred Feb. 26 in Wilson's gym during lunch recess:

He "walked unaccompanied into the gym [and] found himself surrounded by five 9th grade students. . . . For several minutes they proceeded to punch him in the face until two 12th graders broke it up."

"On the same day," Rahman wrote, "a 9th grade student was also 'jumped,' a term used to describe the violent assault action of one group that belong to a gang as they hit and maim their lonely victim. All these violent crimes occurred a day after Wilson security had discovered a gun that was found through the metal detector scanner in a student's bag."

Of her son, Rahman wrote: "The doctor says he was lucky to escape a skull fracture or loss of vision or hearing...

The e-mail continued: "This school year, Wilson has had a rash of violent student assaults and countless number of robberies. I am sure you are aware that our students are often victims of the same crime two or three times. . . . So far in the last three weeks both the Hawk security guards and D.C. police have confirmed to me that they have made 4 arrests of students in the school facilities for a combination of assaults and other criminal activities."

Rahman said that she was concerned that some Wilson students have been subjected to "terror and violence," that teachers and staff weren't present to protect students, that security guards are few and poorly trained, and that security cameras are poorly placed and vandalized.

She pointed to teenagers who roam hallways and the gym, looking for others to prey upon. "Most lack the proper tools to maintain class interest and focus, so they are rarely in class to the delight of most teachers who are tired of the discipline issues."

Things are so out of hand, Rahman wrote in a follow-up e-mail, "that assailants at Wilson often capture their attacks by video and circulate them with little fear of being caught and these videos that offensively chronicle their attacks are being used" to intimidate "all those who dare challenge their assailants."

Teachers need the power to remove unruly kids from their classes, and principals need more power to expel them. Quite frankly, some kids just don't belong in school. This is an extreme example of what happens when we feel like we have to save every one of them. It doesn't work, and it can lead to the point where no one can get an education.

I have never been a fan of vouchers, and I wouldn't want to see them used in any district that has schools that have the potential to be a good ones, but how can anyone argue against them in this situation. Does anyone actually believe that a "new program" or more money could possibly turn a school like this around?

Our priority must be to see to it that every kid who wants an education can get one. My first choice would be to see every violent and disruptive kid thrown out of this school, and I don't care how many that is. But assuming that isn't going to happen, in a situation like this, I would be happy to see my taxes spent to send kids who want an education to private schools. Something has to be done to separate those kids from the thugs who are, in effect, running this school.

An experiment I would love to try

2008-03-31T17:35:00.000-07:00

Last week, Darren, the Conservative Teacher, posted about an experiment he has joked about trying. There is an experiment I would like to try, but I'm not joking.

When I read Diane Ravitch's Left Back, I learned that way back in 1934 a leading educational scholar named Isaac Kandel said this: "There is one part of our educational system, secondary and higher, in which there is no compromise with standards, in which there is rigid selection both of instructors and students, in which there is no soft pedogogy, and in which training and sacrifice of the individual for common ends are accepted without question. I refer, of course, to the organization of athletics." He suggested that American education could reinvigorate itself by following the model of athletic programs. That made me think of something a wonderful female English teacher in our school said to me a number of years ago.

It was early in the hockey season, and that year we had so many kids out that we had to make some cuts. That is something every coach dreads more than anything else, and I was complaining to our English teacher about it. She said to me, "You know, I wish I could make cuts for my English class. I wish the students had to try out." And that leads to my proposed experiment.

On the first day of school, I would like to announce to my American History students that they are going to have to try out for my history class. At the end of three weeks, cuts will be made. Making the class will not be based on ability. It will be based on the willingness they demonstrate to do the things necessary to be successful in the class, and their willingness to behave appropriately in the classroom. At the end of three weeks a list will be posted on my classroom door with the names of students who have made "the team." Students who make the cut can still be dismissed from the team anytime during the year if their effort or behavior should fall below the standards expected in the class. Students who fail to make the cut can certainly try out again next year.

Do you think I might end up with a pretty good American History class if I did that?

Arrogance

2008-03-29T15:10:00.000-07:00

In a comment on my last post, Charley, whose views on public education differs a tad bit from my own, recommended that I read a couple of pieces by John Taylor Gatto, a former New York City teacher of the year. One was called "Why Schools Don't Educate," and the other one was "Against School: How Public Education Cripples Our Kids, and Why." I came away impressed with Gatto's intelligence, and I assume he was probably a pretty good teacher. But I feel strongly that the picture he paints of our pubic education system is horribly inaccurate, and quite frankly, I resented most of what he had to say.

In "Why Schools Don't Educate," which I assume is the speech he gave in accepting his teacher of the year award, Gatto started out graciously enough:

I accept this award on behalf of all the fine teachers I've known over the years who've struggled to make their transactions with children honorable ones, men and women who are never complacent, always questioning, always wrestling to define and redefine endlessly what the word "education" should mean. A Teacher of the Year is not the best teacher around, those people are too quiet to be easily uncovered, but he is a standard-bearer, symbolic of these private people who spend their lives gladly in the service of children. This is their award as well as mine.

I'm not sure which teachers he's talking about there, but I assume it's not many of us, because that's the last positive thing he has to say about anything in public education. I would imagine that people like my friend Daniel Simms are thrilled that Gatto basically argues that the entire purpose of public education has been a plot by some nameless entities above us all to keep the masses in their place:

We don't need Karl Marx's conception of a grand warfare between the classes to see that it is in the interest of complex management, economic or political, to dumb people down, to demoralize them, to divide them from one another, and to discard them if they don't conform...But the motives behind the disgusting decisions that bring about these ends need not be class-based at all. They can stem purely from fear, or from the by now familiar belief that "efficiency" is the paramount virtue, rather than love, liberty, laughter, or hope. Above all, they can stem from simple greed...

We must wake up to what our schools really are: laboratories of experimentation on young minds, drill centers for the habits and attitudes that corporate society demands. Mandatory education serves children only incidentally; its real purpose is to turn them into servants.

Now, I just finished Diane Ravitch's history on public education, and I got the impression that there had been a lot of mistakes made, but I completely missed the idea that Gatto is selling in his history. I don't know how anyone could spend any time in a public school these days and come to the conclusion that we are making kids too compliant. And as if it isn't bad enough that public education is simply there to turn young people into servants, Gatto also blames public education for nearly all of society's ills:

Think of the things that are killing us as a nation - narcotic drugs, brainless competition, recreational sex, the pornography of violence, gambling, alcohol, and the worst pornography of all - lives devoted to buying things, accumulation as a philosophy - all of them are addictions of dependent personalities, and that is what our brand of schooling must inevitably produce...

Maturity has by now been banished from nearly every aspect of our lives. Easy divorce laws have removed the need to work at relationships; easy credit has removed the need for fiscal self-control; easy entertainment has removed the need to learn to entertain oneself; easy answers have removed the need to ask questions. We have become a nation of children, happy to surrender our judgments and our wills to political exhortations and commercial blandishments that would insult actual adults. We buy televisions, and then we buy the things we see on the television. We buy computers, and then we buy the things we see on the computer. We buy $150 sneakers whether we need them or not, and when they fall apart too soon we buy another pair. We drive SUVs and believe the lie that they constitute a kind of life insurance, even when we're upside-down in them. And, worst of all, we don't bat an eye when Ari Fleischer tells us to "be careful what you say," even if we remember having been told somewhere back in school that America is the land of the free. We simply buy that one too. Our schooling, as intended, has seen to it.

My first question regarding Gatto's point of view is this: If that was the way he felt, why did he stay in the field for thirty years? Wouldn't the honorable thing to do have been to resign and find something else to do?

There is only one answer that I can think of, and it is that Gatto saw himself as having a messianic duty to save as many kids as possible from those of us who are unwitting saps and simply cogs in the machine. I have read books by "progressive" educators before who have the same mentality, and I am turned off by it. The arrogance of Gatto and other "expert" teachers like him make me want to vomit. They seem to be saying, "Those few teachers who do things like me are wonderful and caring and saving kids from the system. The rest of you are all uncaring, inept, educational Neanderthals." Gatto gives a couple of examples of things we should be doing as teachers, but I didn't exactly get how I'm supposed to apply his ideas. I think maybe we're just supposed to wing it.

During my career as a teacher I have seen educators with greatly varying styles be successful with them. Quite frankly, the ones who have most consistently been successful have been the ones with the most order and discipline in their classes, and by the end of the year they are often the most popular with their students. Unless I am completely misreading him, these are the teachers that Gatto seems to have the most disdain for. But, on the other hand, I've also seen teachers who use so-called progressive methods be very successful. If there is one thing I have learned, it is that one size does not fit all.

Unlike Gatto, I do not see public schools as prisons. Do I ever get frustrated? You betcha! But nearly every day that I leave my house and head for school, I feel pretty good about it. I see our school as a place of fantastic opportunity for young people. I have seen and continue to see wonderful kids excel in academics, sports, and the arts. I have seen and continue to see kids in our hallways with a spring in their step, and smiles on their faces. Is that true for all kids in public schools? Obviously not. In fact, it's not true for enough of them. But it is true for most of the kids who come to school with the right attitude--the kids who have the desire to take advantage of the opportunity in front of them. If that's a prison, then it's one helluva nice one, and despite all the complaining I do and the frustrations that I feel, there's no place I'd rather be. The good kids we have make it more than worth it. I don't see myself as the educational messiah, but the hope that I'm making a small difference in some of their lives gives me a pretty good feeling.

My Three Sons

2008-03-24T11:04:00.000-07:00

I set this blog up to defend public education, but I feel like I haven't been doing a very good job lately, especially when I look at the comments. Many of the comments at least imply that public schools don't do a very good job educating kids, and a number of people have made it clear that they believe we should dismantle our public education system. They have argued that we would be better off if education were totally subjected to market forces. Those who really wanted education for their kids could either homeschool their children or send them to a private school.

This made me start thinking about the effects that public education has had on my own kids, and it made me wonder what things would be like if there had never been any such thing. All three of our kids went to public schools (Surprise, surprise!), all three of them have graduated from college, and all three of them seem to be doing quite well. There are those who would argue that they would be doing just as well or better if there were no public schools, but I really have to wonder about that.

If there were no public school system, education for my own kids would have been a problem. My wife and I were both working when our kids were growing up, so that would pretty well shoot the homeschooling option for us. That leaves private schooling, and that would have been a battle. Now that we are older and our kids are gone, we are living quite comfortably, but things were very tight when our kids were in school. My salary when I began teaching was less than $10,000 per year. (Of course, my salary has always come from the public school system, but I doubt that anyone would argue that teachers would have higher salaries if we only had private schools.) Education is important to our family, so I suppose we would have found a way, but it sure wouldn't have been easy.

Many would argue that if we had sent our kids to private schools they would have gotten a superior education, but I don't see how they could have done any better. Our youngest son, Garrett, is very bright. After graduating from high school, he went to Stetson University in Florida which is populated largely by graduates of private schools in the South. I once asked Garrett if he felt like he was at a disadvantage because of this, and he actually laughed at the question. He ended up graduating Magna Cum Laude from Stetson.

We keep hearing that graduates of American public schools don't have the skills to go into high tech fields, but both Garrett and our oldest son, Pat, are in those fields. That's not so surprising for Garrett, but it is for Pat, because he was a student of average ability. It's especially surprising because our school has now failed to meet it's AYP in math for the last two years. I guess that makes us a failing school when it comes to math, but I have to wonder how that can be when I've got two sons doing so well who got their start right here. Pat had to work quite hard at those upper level math classes to make it, but isn't that the way it should be?

Perhaps the one who benefited most from public schools was our middle son, Andy. Andy has developed amazing people skills, and is now a third grade teacher in Pleasant Valley, Iowa. Like Pat, he was an average student, but he was a very good hockey player. He was elected by his peers as captain of his high school team, then his junior team, and then his college team for both his junior and senior years. He was also appointed assistant captain of one of his professional teams by the management. Andy believes his greatest strength is an ability to relate to almost any personality type, and I would have to agree. All I have to do is remember the variety of friends he brought home when he was in high school. When he got married, two of his old high school friends were groomsmen--one who had been near the top of his class academically, and the other who had been near the bottom. I have to believe that there could have been no better places to develop the skills he has for relating to people than the public schools that he attended for thirteen years.

The point of this post is not to brag about my sons (although you may notice that I manged to do that). In the last few posts there have been comments from a number of people who, whether they intended to or not, gave the impression that it's nearly impossible to get a decent education in a public school unless the student has a great deal of ability. This reflects what I believe to be a growing perception in our society, and I think a very dangerous one. I know this perception isn't true. I know it isn't true most intimately from the experience of my own sons, but I also know it from seeing the experiences of hundreds of other young people who have gone through the public schools in which I've taught.

Our kids got a good education in a public school because it was reasonably important to them to do so. In my 34 years of teaching, that has consistently been the case. Kids get about as good an education as they want. The problem is that we have too many kids who don't care about that. The personnel in our math department has changed little since Pat graduated, so when our school fails to meet its AYP in math for two straight years, I have to wonder why that is. Is it because the people in our math department suddenly started doing a lousy job? Or is it because we don't have enough kids who are willing to put in the work that Pat did to learn it? Since I have nearly all of our students in at least one of my classes by the time they graduate, and I see first-hand the effort they put forth, I think I know the answer to that one.

Our kids wanted to get a decent education in large part because it was important to my wife and me. That's almost always the way it is--when the parents really care about their kids' education, the kids almost always end up doing at least okay. I do have to admit, however, that I did have one huge advantage over other parents: I worked at my kids' high school. Every day, I would see how they behaved in the halls, and if they fell behind or did something stupid in one of their classes, it wouldn't be long before I found out. But most important of all, I would see who they were hanging around with, and I would know what those kids were like in school.

The biggest danger for concerned parents sending their kids off to middle school and high school is not that the school will have poor administration or even poor teachers. The biggest danger is that their kids might end up following the wrong crowd. The influence of peers is enormous to teenagers, and it is something with which many parents can't compete. This is the area where I wish those of us in public schools had more power to help the parents who care about their kids education. If we could separate the most incorrigible kids, it would be a big step forward.

I'll sue you!

2008-03-20T05:15:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, Joanne Jacobs did a short post on a 15-year-old who is suing his high school because his math teacher woke him up in her class by slapping her open palm on his desk. The fine lad's lawyer called it an assault and battery.

This might strike some as funny and others as ridiculous, but it really is harmful. If there is one area in public education that needs improvement, it's discipline. A major reason for that is that teachers and principals feel like they're walking on eggshells when it comes to dealing with misbehaving students because of the constant threat of lawsuits. This situation is a prime example of that.

In my first couple of years in Warroad, I had two separate incidents in which students did something blatantly wrong, and when I looked at them with obvious displeasure, each of the students said to me, "If you hit me, I'll sue you." Not, "Sorry!" Not, "I won't do it again," but "If you hit me, I'll sue you." Now, I had no intention of hitting either student, but I think this speaks volumes about what these students thought of a teacher's authority. They knew that my options were very limited in dealing with their misbehavior. Nearly all of the worst behaving students in public schools have that mindset.

Part of the reason that I was treated with such blatant defiance was that I was relatively new in the school. I've now been in Warroad for nineteen years, and I've managed to establish a certain reputation, so nothing like that has happened to me since those first couple of years. But I still have more problems than I should have. (When students tell me that I am known in the school for being strict, I can only shake my head in wonder.) I might not have anyone coming out and saying what those two students said, but my worst behaving students still know that there's only so much I can do. The only way a teacher can have real power in dealing with students like this is if they are afraid the teacher might be willing to do something they know he actually isn't supposed to do.

One Warroad teacher, who had the best discipline of any teacher I've known, once told me how he handled a disruptive student. He took the student into a back room, and when they were alone, he got nose to nose with the student and physically threatened him. End of problem. Knowing that teacher as I do, it's safe to say he wasn't bluffing. I have no doubt that the student involved understood that a lawsuit wouldn't deter that teacher. But is that what it should take to have good discipline?

Our nation is the most litigious in the world. We have far more lawyers per capita than almost any other nation on earth; nearly three times as many as Britain, four times as many as Germany, and nearly twenty-five times as many as Japan. No, that is not a misprint--twenty-five times! Do you think there are many kids suing their schools there?

Should public schools teach patriotism?

2008-03-18T17:30:00.000-07:00

Daniel Simms and I have had a running argument about whether or not American public schools "indoctrinate" students. In the comments section on an earlier post, Daniel pulled this quote out of the woodwork from a judge's ruling in 1961 and threw it at me:

"A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and nation as a means of protecting the public welfare."

That brings up two interesting questions: Should public schools teach patriotism? and: If we do, does that amount to indoctrination? When I've seen lists of things that schools should do, teaching patriotism has usually been included. I would guess that about 90 percent of the public would agree with that. But Daniel thinks we shouldn't. Well, you know what? At my level, which is high school, I agree with Daniel--kind of.

I believe that it is my job to impart as much knowledge as possible to my students. I believe it's also my job to encourage them to use that knowledge to think for themselves. I don't believe it's my job to teach them what to think. In fact, that seems to go against everything that I am trying to do.

A few years ago, not too long after 9/11, our school board issued an edict that all teachers were supposed to lead their classes in the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of class at least once a week. I did that for the first few weeks, but then I just kind of forgot about it, and I haven't done it since. I was very uncomfortable doing the Pledge in my classes. One reason I was so uncomfortable was that I am a high school teacher, so I had never done that before. As strange as this might seem to some, it didn't feel "American" to me. It felt forced and phony.

As our old friend Richard Nixon used to say, let me make one thing perfectly clear. I believe in the United States of America. I believe we are the greatest country in the world, and there is nowhere that I would rather be. I believe in the things the Declaration of Independence says, and I think the Constitution was a work of genius. And although I know our country is less than perfect today and has done some horrible things during our history--slavery, treatment of Native Americans, treatment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, some of the things we've done in our foreign policy--I believe we are a decent people, that our political leaders usually try to do the right thing, and that during our history, in fits and starts, we have gradually moved closer and closer to living up to the things that the Declaration of Independence calls for.

But I don't believe that it's appropriate for me to try to sway my students to my point of view on that any more than it would be appropriate for me to try to sway them to my religious or political beliefs. I would rather teach American history as honestly and as fairly as I can, even with all it's warts, and let my kids come to their own conclusions about what kind of country we are. I'm confident that if I do that, most of them will develop a healthy respect and appreciation for our country. And if they don't, that's their choice.

When I start talking about what goes on and what should go on at the elementary school level, I am getting out of my wheelhouse, but I'll take a stab at it anyway. I have no problem with elementary classes opening up their days with the Pledge of Allegience. It seems to me that that goes along with teaching a healthy respect for authority. I also have no problem with focusing on American heroes at the elementary level--in fact, I'd like to see them do a lot of that.

I suppose that Daniel would consider that proof of the indoctrination that he talks about, and maybe it is. But I would guess (and hope) that these are things that private, and even some homeschools do. Public schools don't do those things because we are an arm of the state; we do them because we believe they are the right things to do.

A Re-run: Is God allowed in public schools?

2008-03-17T04:42:00.000-07:00

In my last post, Mrs. C. and I got into a discussion on whether or not God is allowed in public schools. This is a subject that I feel very strongly about. I grew up in a lower-middle class Catholic family in Minneapolis. My parents wanted me to go to college, but they didn’t want me to pursue a career based on how much money I could make. That’s one of the reasons I ended up becoming a teacher. I’ve never been one to wear my religion on my sleeve, but I’ve always felt like I’m practicing my faith when I do my job well. One of my earliest posts was on this subject, and I thought my best answer to Mrs. C. would be to do a re-run of that post. Some readers have already seen it, but I think there are a number of people who check into this blog now who didn't when I first started. So like I told Mrs. C., if TV can do re-runs all the time, why can't I do one? Here it is:

IS GOD ALLOWED IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Of all of the myths that are spread by critics of public education, this is the one that I find the most offensive. It is the myth that God is no longer allowed in public schools. In November of 2001, a couple of months after 9/11, I received one of those mass emails that has become so common. It had been forwarded by one of our teachers to everyone on our staff, so please understand the context of my response. This email message, like so many of them, was supposed to be profound, but, because of the way it began, it only managed to anger me. It began by telling about an interview with Billy Graham's daughter, Anne, that had been shown on TV. I am sure that Anne Graham is a wonderful person, but like so many others, when it comes to public education, she doesn't know what she is talking about. I will share with you the beginning of the email, which includes Ms. Graham's statement, and then the reply that I sent.

THE BEGINNING OF THE MASS EMAIL
Billy Graham's daughter was being interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her "How could God let something like this happen?" And Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said "I believe that God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman that He is, I believe that He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand that He leave us alone?"

MY REPLY
I want to make it clear that this is not meant as a criticism of anyone for sending along this e-mail message. I have no doubt that anyone doing so had the best of intentions. I'm responding because it contains a message that infuriates me when I hear it, and I've been hearing it for a number of years, now. That is the message that we do not allow God in public schools.

One of the reasons this message angers me so much is because it is frequently used by the people who decide to homeschool their children. If we didn't have so many Warroad kids being homeschooled, we wouldn't be in as much danger every year of losing some of our best young teachers and having to cut programs that benefit kids.

The people who promote this message object to the fact that we do not have prayer at the beginning of our school days, like we did up until the mid-1960s. Everyone knows that the basic reason we don't have that anymore is because we have a separation between church and state in this country. The alternative to this is to have whoever is in power impose their interpretation of their religion on society. If you want to know how this would work just look at the Taliban's policies regarding women in Afghanistan.

Many good people argue that the separation of church and state shouldn't preclude prayer in school. Although I'm not sure they're correct, I don't think they are being unreasonable. But I can also remember the discomfort I felt as one of the few Catholic kids in a predominantly Protestant elementary school in the 1960's when we said a prayer in class that did not include the sign of the cross. It wouldn't bother me now, but when I was that young, it did. I never felt any of that discomfort when I said prayers with my family. I wonder how hard it would be today to come up with a prayer that would not cause some discomfort for some of the kids with all of our various religions. I'm not saying that people who believe we should have prayer at the beginning of our day are definitely wrong, but I am saying that those of us who have reservations about this are not necessarily Godless.

Although I wouldn't feel comfortable leading my first hour class in a prayer, God is very important in my life, and I try to bring that to school with me every day. I think there are many teachers like me in that respect.

Even if we don't have school prayers, that doesn't mean we don't allow God in school. Maybe I'm spiritually confused, but I see God more in the way people go about their everyday affairs than in whether or not they are comfortable with public prayer. When teachers go out of their way to help students, isn't God in our school? When some kid who "gets it" tries to help some kid who doesn't "get it," isn't God in our school? When we saw all that concern and love in our school for Katie Olafson [a sophomore who had been killed in a car accident] and her family last year, wasn't God in our school? When Rick McBride's beeper goes off and he goes running out of school to help out with the volunteer fire department because he wants to help people, isn't God in our school? When we buy frozen food, magazines, candy or candles for ridiculous prices, or when we fork out ten to twenty bucks for raffle tickets that we don't really want because we feel like we should help out kids involved in various activities, isn't God in our school? When special ed. or ESL or Indian ed. teachers come and plead with some crotchety old teacher, like me, for some kid that they care about, isn't God in our school? When Nadine ran her food shelf program last week wasn't God in our school?

We are fortunate in Warroad that most concerned parents who care about their kids send them to our school. They send them to our school because they care about their kids, but also because they care about other people's kids and the community. Am I wrong when I think I see God in many of them? These parents are confident in the values they've instilled in their kids, so they don't keep them home out of fear that they will somehow be corrupted by all the sinners among our students and faculty. It is their kids more than anyone or anything else--teachers, administrators, or all the computers money could buy--that make this school a good place to learn. We see these kids everyday, and we see what they do, and I would bet there are at least some kids like that in every public school in America. So if some people can't see God in our public schools, maybe they better take a better look.

Homeschooling

2008-03-14T18:15:00.000-07:00

Homeschooling has been in the news this week. The California State Supreme Court issued a ruling that seemed to require a crackdown on homeschooling in that state, but then their state education superintendent announced that there would be no change in their policy. Ms. Cornelius expressed her concern about the laxity of standards for homeschoolers, and I can see where she's coming from because in Minnesota, we aren't exactly rigid about it. Since I recently wrote a post saying that education shouldn't be compulsory, however, I can't very well take a stand against weak standards for homeschoolers. In the book I wrote, I had a section dealing with homeschooling, I hope nobody minds too much if I do a little plagiarizing from that now.

Homeschooling has gotten a great amount of favorable press, and more and more people are choosing this option for their children. Reports tell about how well many homeschooled kids do on ACTs and SATs, and when homeschoolers do things like winning national spelling bees, they get a lot of attention. With public education being portrayed as a disaster in the media, homeschooling must look very attractive to a lot of parents.

I should begin by saying that I do have a prejudice against homeschooling. Our school distict has lost a lot of kids to homeschooling over the past several years, and because of that we've lost some very good young teachers who ended up being cut. That would be bad enough in itself, but in Warroad, many of the homeschoolers belong to the "God is not allowed in public schools" crowd. If you want to send this fairly level-headed person into an absolute rage, all you have to do is say that.

We have two kinds of homeschoolers in Warroad, and those students in one of them definitely won't be winning any spelling bees or dazzling us with their college entrance exam scores. A typical example is a boy I had at the beginning of a recent school year. He showed up the first day, missed the next two, then showed up again, then missed, and so on. I can't remember all of his excuses, but I do remember one was the ever-popular, "My grandfather's sick." Who knows? Maybe he was. But why a high school student would have to miss eight days for Grandpa's illness is beyond me. In any case, after about three weeks, our school secretary showed me a note from his mother: "I will be homeschooling my son for his last two cources." (Her spelling, not mine.) Her son's last two "cources" were the American history class that I teach and--you guessed it--English.

I am all for homeschooling this type of student. Unless he was suddenly transformed, he wasn't going to contribute anything positive to his classes, and he had the definite potential for dragging another student or two down with him. I think our school actually owes that mother a big thank you.

There are other homeschoolers in our district, though, who will do well on college entrance exams. I have no doubt that, with an intelligent parent, a child can get a great education at home. There are valid questions about what a homeschooler misses socially, but from the point of view of a student's academic development, having an individually tailored curriculum could certainly be an advantage.

My biggest concern with homeschooling, as far as motivated students are concerned, is not what they are missing out on, but what our schools are missing out on by not having them with us. We need those kids! A few years back I had one such student in my economics and sociology classes. He had been homeschooled for most of his life, but he took some classes at our high school. He was a great kid who was very bright, and there could be no doubt that his parents had done a fantastic job. He was a very mild mannered young man, but he took part in our discussions--almost reluctantly, it seemed--and he always had something intelligent to say. My economics and sociology classes were better because of him. I don't know what he missed by not taking all his classes in our schools, but I know that we missed him. I would have loved to have had him in one of my American history classes two years before, and the other students would have loved having him, too. Had he been in one of those classes, that class would have been better, and the students in that class would have learned more. He is now the student body president at the University of North Dakota.

It would be hard to criticize parents who homeschool their children in a school district where it was impossible to get a good education, but that has not been the case in Warroad. We have a school where students can get a good education, because we still have enough kids from families with parents who care about education and who still trust us enough to send us their kids. But if a school like ours loses enough of those kids--as the media, many experts, and politicians seem to be encouraging--it won't matter how good the teachers are, or how good the principal is, or what new and nifty teaching techniques are being used, or how much high tech equipment is brought in. It’s simply not going to be a very good place to learn. The scary thing is that we have lost a lot of kids to homeschooling over the last few years, and we aren't as good a school as we were when I wrote my book.

There are homeschooling parents for whom I have a great deal of respect. Obviously I respect the parents of that economics and sociology student that I had. I also have a great deal of respect for Mark Roulo, a homeschooling parent, who is kind enough to privately tell me via email when I've made a mistake on one of my posts, rather than letting everyone know in the comments section. But anyone who has read a few of my posts probably knows that I believe the effect that kids have on other kids in our schools is incredibly important. The most critical need in our public schools today is for good parents who really think education is important to have enough confidence in us to trust us with their children. Good parents who send their kids to public schools may not know it, but they are performing a service to their communities and to our nation. If we have enough kids from those families, our public schools are going to be just fine. But if more and more of those good parents become convinced that public schools are too inadequate for their kids, then that perception will increasingly become reality. And that would be a national tragedy.

Any appeal I make in this respect may well fall on a lot of deaf ears, because I'm not sure many of the homeschooling parents--at least in my community--care about this. Obviously, as a public school teacher, I don't have much contact with them, but I did when I ran our Little League baseball program in which some of them would enroll their kids. I realize that this is anecdotal, but in my dealings with them, I found the homeschooling parents that I dealt with, by their actions and requests, to be very concerned about their own children, but not about anyone else's. They didn't care about their kids' teammates, they didn't care about kids on the other teams, and they didn't care about what we were trying to do with our program. It's natural for parents to care the most about their own children, and there's nothing wrong with that. But I think we have better communities and a better nation when parents who are concerned about their own kids' education and activities also have concern for other kids. I see that in the best parents of kids in our school. I have seen very little of it in homeschooling parents in Warroad.

What should a high school graduate look like?

2008-03-10T18:00:00.000-07:00

In my post about whether or not education should be compulsory, Charley suggested a post about what a high school graduate would look like. That ain't easy, and I've been thinking about how to approach that ever since. A couple of days ago I got some help when I finished Left Back by Diane Ravitch. I'm going to use some of the things she said at the end of her book as a template, and then take off from there. I'd love to hear what other people think about this.

1. Students should learn the importance of honesty, personal responsibility, intellectual curiosity, industry, kindness, empathy, and courage. I would say that this category includes things like behavior and respect for other people--fellow students and teachers.

Ravitch does not list this group of attributes first, but I do. I do that because I think how effective we are at helping students to acquire the other attributes Ravitch talks about is all based on this. If students are irresponsible, if they believe that cheating is normal, and if they don't care about anything or anyone other than themselves, we are not going to get very far in educating them. And the big problem is that we are not allowed to teach kids the importance of these things nearly as effectively as we should be able to because it is so difficult for us to set meaningful limits.

Graduates from high school who do see the importance of things like honesty, personal responsibility, kindness and empathy do so primarily because they have good parents. Our schools are trying to reinforce those attributes as much as we can, but we can't reinforce them as much as we should, and it is nearly impossible for us to turn around kids who are not learning those things at home.

2. Nearly all students should gain literacy and numeracy. They should have an understanding of history, the sciences, and literature. They should learn "about the culture in which they live and about cultures that existed long ago." (Ravitch also says the each student should learn a foreign language, but I'm not sold on that.)

It is very difficult to say exactly where a high school graduate should be in this area, because it is so dependent on the abilities and desires of the student. We would expect a student planning on going to college to be stronger here than a student who plans on going to work or a tech school after high school.

Since I teach American history, I will say that students should at least know basic things like which war was which, they should know something about why presidents like Washington, Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt were important and when they were in office, they should know something about the history of Indians and African-Americans in our country, and they should be able to form reasonably intelligent opinions and ask reasonably intelligent questions about those things.

How well are we doing? Not nearly as well as I would like. I'm confident that most of my students can do these things when a test is given, but a year or two later? I just don't know.

3. They should learn to use "symbolic language and abstract ideas."

I've separated this from the one above because of my experience with Basic American History classes. When it comes to dealing with abstract ideas, there are some kids who just can't get it. They can be taught that Adolf Hitler was from Germany, and they can be taught to associate him with the Nazi party, but introduce ideas like fascism, communism, totalitarianism, democracy, federalism, and separation of powers, and it just doesn't click.

4. Students should be prepared to have "versatile intelligence," which is the intelligence "that allows individuals to learn new tasks and take charge of their lives."

I think we're actually doing pretty well here. Every class that I've had has included a number of people who ended up doing much better than I ever thought they would once they got out into the "real world." Those who do worse are rare. I don't know how much of this they are getting from their classes. I hope some. But our kids might well be learning "versatile intelligence" in athletics, other extra-curricular activities and, although it makes me cringe to say this, their after-school jobs.

I have said this before, and I'll say it again: In the schools in which I've taught, students who wanted a good education have been able to get one. I would guess that that is the situation in most public schools across the nation. The problem is that there are too many young people who don't really care.

Public schools need the ability to turn a significant number of those kids around. At the middle and high school levels, that can only be done by allowing schools to demand a reasonable level of effort and reasonable behavior. And demand doesn't mean encourage, it doesn't mean persuade, and it doesn't mean coming up with another program. It means demand.

Three Roadblocks on the Path to Common Sense

2008-03-06T08:46:00.000-08:00

In many of my posts and comments, I have argued that the best thing we could do to improve public education would be to give teachers the power to remove disruptive and unmotivated kids from their classrooms. When I've had conversations with other teachers, and even parents that I know, about this, they almost always agree. But if most teachers and a lot of good parents agree that this would be a good thing, why can't we do it? Here are three major roadblocks that are in the way.

ROADBLOCK #1: THE POLITICAL RHETORIC OF THE TIMES

If you suggest to a teacher who wants to do his job well, or a parent of well-behaved kids that some kids in school should be kicked out of their classes, most of them will know exactly what you mean. But can you imagine a politician, a talking head on TV, or any member of the educational elite taking that position today? The name of our national educational reform plan, No Child Left Behind, speaks volumes. The political rhetoric of the late 20th and early 21st century has consistently proclaimed that every child must be given a quality education. If only we could get those in power to recognize that it is possible to give the opportunity for an education to every child, but it is impossible to give an education to anyone. Then, perhaps, we could get them to change what they are saying and the policies they are making.

ROADBLOCK #2: VIEWING EDUCATION AS A PROPERTY RIGHT

In rulings it made in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Supreme Court declared that education is a student's property right, and it cannot be taken away without due process of law. They also determined that if any school official denies a student his or her rights, and that official knew it or should have known it, that official can be sued.

There are libertarians, as we know from comments on this blog, who believe that education should not be provided by the government. I don't agree with them on that, but I do agree that education should not be considered a right. A right is something that government should not be able to take away from you--freedom to express yourself, freedom to be whatever religion you want, your property; it is not something that the government is obligated to provide for you. In his book, The Death of Common Sense, Philip K. Howard said that education is not a right, but a benefit that is provided by a democratic society. He also said that the Supreme Court's turning education into a property right has done more damage to public education than anything else that has happened in the last 40 years. He is right.

The hopeful note on this is that the Supreme Court does change its mind. In fact, it has changed its mind over 260 times. In 1992 Sandra Day O'Connor listed the criteria that should be used by the Court for overturning precedent. She said the Court must determine whether the rule established by the earlier Court was workable. When you look around at was is happening in some public schools around the nation, it seems clear that this rule is backfiring. Instead of guaranteeing the right to an education, it is taking away the opportunity for a decent education for many kids.

ROADBLOCK #3: OUR UNIONS
If I am right that the great majority of teachers believe we need more power to remove disruptive kids from our classrooms, it seems natural that the battle to do that should be joined by our unions. But let's face it, that isn't going to happen.

There are a number of reasons for this. First of all, our unions are controlled by people who buy into the political rhetoric of the times that says we must save every kid. Most regular classroom teachers have some common sense, so they know that many of the educational platitudes we hear sound wonderful but are completely unrealistic. They understand that saving every kid isn't possible and that we are ruining education for a lot of young people who could be saved by following that route.

The problem is that the people who run our unions do not fit that mold. Some of them have never run a classroom, some of them have not done so for a number of years, and others are educational ideologues. Ideologues of any kind tend to forfeit their common sense. They buy into their party line and platitudes even when that goes against everything they've seen in real life.

Even more important, I suspect, is that if we start questioning "due process rights" for crummy students, it is only natural that someone will say, "Well, what about those due process rights for crummy teachers?" That will call into question tenure and seniority, and there is no way that our unions want to go down that road.

And finally, although I hate to be so cynical, I would guess that there might be another very practical reason why our unions have never suggested that there are some kids who don't belong in school. Giving blatantly disruptive and hopelessly apathetic kids the boot would mean fewer kids in school. Fewer kids in school, might mean fewer teachers (although I don't think that would have to be the case). Fewer teachers means less union dues and less money for staff.

I want to point out that I do believe in teachers' unions. I think they have made a very positive difference in my own life. But on this particular issue, they have been, and I'm afraid will continue to be, useless. When it comes to defending teachers' rights against administrators, our unions have been completely fearless. When it comes to teachers' rights to do their jobs effectively by removing kids from their classrooms who make that impossible, they have been completely gutless.

These roadblocks are enormous. How can they be overcome? I wish I had an answer, but I don't. But then, you never know. Barack Obama made a speech in which he told parents that they need to start doing a better job, and I never thought that would happen. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could find some politician, or even a popular TV talking head, with the common sense and guts to grab this issue? Wouldn't saying, "Teachers should be given the power to remove disruptive kids from their classrooms!" fit right in with John McCain's crusty, no-nonsense, straight-talk image? Well, I can always dream.

A speech I never thought I'd hear from a politician !

2008-03-05T06:46:00.000-08:00

Joanne Jacobs ran a post last week featuring the following portion of a speech by Barack Obama: (If you go to Joanne's post, she has a YouTube video of the speech.)

“It’s not good enough for you to say to your child, ‘Do good in school,’ and then when that child comes home, you’ve got the TV set on,” Obama lectured. “You’ve got the radio on. You don’t check their homework. There’s not a book in the house. You’ve got the video game playing.”

Each line was punctuated by a roar, and Obama began to shout, falling into a preacher’s rhythm. “Am I right?”

“So turn off the TV set. Put the video game away. Buy a little desk. Or put that child at the kitchen table. Watch them do their homework. If they don’t know how to do it, give ‘em help. If you don’t know how to do it, call the teacher.”

By now, the crowd of nearly 2,000 was lifted from the red velveteen seats of the Julie Rogers Theatre, hands raised to the gilded ceiling. “Make ‘em go to bed at a reasonable time! Keep ‘em off the streets! Give ‘em some breakfast! Come on! Can I get an amen here?”

Whooooooooooooooooo, went the crowd. “You know I’m right,” Obama laughed. “And, since I’m on a roll, if your child misbehaves in school, don’t cuss out the teacher! You know I’m right about that! Don’t cuss out the teacher! Do something with your child!”

Now, I have been following the presidential primary and caucus contests closely, but I still haven't made up my mind who I think should be the next president. Barack Obama has inspired many people, and I think that's terrific, but I've got my concerns about him. I'm concerned about his Iraq policy. I'm concerned about his inexperience. I'm concerned because I know that someone can run a terrific campaign to become president, but then that same person might not be able to govern effectively, like Jimmy Carter. I think about John Kennedy being unable to get things through a Congress controlled by his own party, and I have to wonder how Obama would do with a Congress that is divided much more sharply along partisan lines than it was in the 60s, and with a Senate that has decided filibusters should be thrown around like candy. I am concerned because Kennedy was also able to inspire people, but mistakes he made in dealing Cuba and the Soviet Union early in his presidency almost led to World War III. I am concerned because while Obama talks about bipartisanship, he is the most liberal Democrat that we have in the Senate, and he has never really reached across the aisle like John McCain and Hillary Clinton have.

I won't say, yet, that I will vote for Obama, but I am thrilled by this speech. It is a speech that I never thought I would hear a presidential candidate give. It is so much easier to blame teachers, schools, or government for the poor performance of kids in school. Never did I think I would hear a presidential candidate tell parents that they've got to do their jobs better.

Many of the commenters on Joanne's post reacted to the speech by questioning his policies, and I guess that's fair. One commenter said that Obama's speech was just a warmed over version of what Bill Cosby has said. That may be true, but Bill Cosby wasn't running for president, and if he offended anyone by saying it, he really didn't have anything to lose. Regardless of what policies he has supported in the past, and what policies he's proposing for the future, I believe that a presidential candidate saying the things that Obama said is a huge step forward.

The Magic of Limits

2008-03-03T05:03:00.000-08:00

If I ever wrote a post on all the ideas I've had and things I've tried that failed miserably, it would probably be the world's longest post. Since I don't like long posts, I'm not going to do that. And besides, if I did that, no one would ever tell me again, like Daniel Simms did in a comment on an earlier post, that I am at least as smart as they are. (I still get a lump in my throat when I go back and look at that one!) Instead of that, I'm going to write about something I did that actually worked. Amazing, but true! And I'm going to write about that because I think there's a lesson in it.

When it comes to doing the things students are supposed to do in school, there are different types of kids. One type sees education as important. They do the things that are necessary to be successful in school, and they behave well because they believe that is what they are supposed to do. If all kids were like this, there would be no teacher shortage; people would be knocking down the doors to get into the profession. But not all kids are like that.

At the other end of the spectrum are kids who I would call "the limit-pushers." They don't like authority, no matter how reasonable the people with that authority try to be. For whatever psychological reasons, these kids are interested in seeing what they can get away with, and they will constantly be pushing the limits to see how far they can go. Some of them realize that they need an education, and they might even want to get decent grades; others don't really care about the education, but they want to stay in school for the social aspect; and still others don't even care about that. Finally, there is a large group of kids who are in-between. They are not limit-pushers themselves, but they are constantly paying attention to how much the limit-pushers are able to get away with, and they behave accordingly.

One of the biggest problems we have in public education is that the limit-pushers inevitably find out that there aren't very many limits, and of course, the in-betweeners see that, too. Behavior in classes can be outrageous, and nothing particularly bad will happen. Kids might get scolded, they might get detention, or they might get suspended for a couple of days. Big deal! Kids who don't care very much about getting an education find out that if they don't do their schoolwork, they will get a low grade, and they might even fail a class or two. Once again, big deal!

There are so few limits in public schools because the courts have ruled that education is a property right that can't be taken away without due process of law, and teachers and school officials can be sued if a judge--who has never been in a classroom--decides that somebody's rights have been violated. As a result of this, in too many public school classrooms across our nation, behavior is horrible and effort is minimal.

If only we could establish meaningful limits, we could do so much better. Over the last year, I've had an experience that, I believe, demonstrates this. Our school has a tardy policy that has basically become a joke. Beginning with the third tardy for a class during a marking period, kids are assigned a half-hour of detention. So once a kid hits that third tardy, the teacher has to fill out a discipline slip for that tardy and every subsequent one, turn them into the office, and then the principal will assign the detention.

Most students want to avoid detention, but as I said earlier, many of the limit-pushers couldn't care less about that. Up until last year, I would always have a few kids with tardies in the double-digits for each quarter--ten tardies, twelve tardies, seventeen tardies. There is no question that filling out the discipline slips was a lot more hassle for me than the detention was for those students. If some of those students decided not to serve the detention, and enough detentions piled up, they would be suspended. Hey, vacation!

Finally, a year ago, I had enough. At the beginning of the third marking period, I told my classes that from that point on, beginning with a student's fifth tardy, I would not allow that student into class. The student would be sent to the office, and would receive a zero for everything we did in class that day.

Since I began operating under that policy, the most tardies any of my students have had is six, and that was just one student. No other students have had more than five tardies, and the number with that many has dropped dramatically. I was able to set a very clear limit for my students, and man, did that solve the problem.

I have argued that teachers should be given the authority to remove disruptive and apathetic students from their classrooms. I have also argued that if we had that authority, we wouldn't end up having to remove very many students. I think my experience with my tardy policy lends credence to that.

Right now, I have about seven kids for whom the biggest favor I could do would be to tell them that they have about two weeks to pick up their performance or they will be gone. But I can't do that. So they will continue to do nothing, and the third quarter will end, and they will take their Fs. Until then, they will tell themselves that they will try next quarter. And then, when next quarter comes, they will tell themselves that they will try tomorrow...or next week...or next month.

If only those of us who teach in public schools were given the power to set more limits. The magic that we could work!!!!!!!!!!!!

We're goin' to the show!

2008-03-02T12:42:00.000-08:00

As many of you know, this year I jumped back into hockey coaching after being out of it for one year. I became an assistant coach in our high school program, and I had a blast! I was responsible for our JV team, and I am also the goaltending guru for the varsity. Our JV team compiled a record of 20-4-1, and last week our varsity earned a birth in the state hockey tournament, which is known in Minnesota as "the big show." We did it with a 7-0 victory over Crookston, a 2-1 double-overtime thriller with Thief River Falls, and a 2-0 nail-biter over East Grand Forks. Our section tournament was held in Thief River Falls, which is about 100 miles from here, so I've been busy.

Tomorrow, I'm headed with the team for St. Paul, and I'll be gone for a week. I plan on bringing my laptop with, but along with the other coaches, I'll be responsible for twenty-plus teenagers twenty-four hours a day for about six days. So if I'm slow responding to comments, I hope you'll understand. But I do plan on trying to keep up on this. You're not getting rid of me that easily!

Should American education be nationalized?

2008-03-01T11:18:00.000-08:00

In one on his comments on my last post, Daniel Simms expressed his concern about having a national curriculum. I have never had particularly strong feelings one way or another about that, but it’s an interesting topic. I’m interested in knowing Daniel’s reasons for being so strongly against it, and I hope by posting this, we’ll get that, as well as the views of some others on the subject.

I have read a couple of books by E. D. Hirsch, the cultural literacy guru, and he is a very strong proponent of a national curriculum. One reason he is so strongly in favor of a national curriculum is the mobility of the American population. A relatively large number of people with children move from one school district to another during a school year. Some of these people move frequently, and those that do usually don’t have very high incomes. Hirsch argues that different states and different school districts all being on their own programs makes it nearly impossible for those children to keep up in school. Hirsch also believes there needs to be a core base of knowledge that all Americans share so that people in our country can read and communicate intelligently.

Hirsch is not the only one for nationalizing education. About a week before Daniel asked me what I thought about a national curriculum, a friend of mine had given me an article by Matt Miller in Atlantic Monthly called "First, Kill All the School Boards."

In the article, Miller acknowledges that nationalizing education has never been a popular idea, but he argues that the time has come:

In (Horace Mann's) time, the challenge was to embrace a bigger role for the state; today, the challenge is to embrace a bigger role for the federal government in standards, funding, and other arenas.

The usual explanation for why national standards won’t fly is that the right hates “national” and the left hates “standards.” But that’s changing. Two Republican former secretaries of education, Rod Paige and William Bennett, now support national standards and tests, writing in The Washington Post: “In a world of fierce economic competition, we can’t afford to pretend that the current system (of state and local control) is getting us where we need to go.” On the Democratic side, John Podesta, a former chief of staff to President Clinton and the current president of the Center for American Progress, told me that he believes the public is far ahead of the established political wisdom...

Recent polling suggests he’s right. Two surveys conducted for the education campaign Strong American Schools, which I advised in 2006, found that a majority of Americans think there should be uniform national standards. Most proponents suggest we start by establishing standards and tests in grades 3–12 in the core subjects—reading, math, and science—and leave more-controversial subjects, such as history, until we have gotten our feet wet...

Nationalizing our schools even a little goes against every cultural tradition we have, save the one that matters most: our capacity to renew ourselves to meet new challenges. Once upon a time a national role in retirement funding was anathema; then suddenly, after the Depression, we had Social Security. Once, a federal role in health care would have been rejected as socialism; now, federal money accounts for half of what we spend on health care. We started down this road on schooling a long time ago. Time now to finish the journey.

I can see some of the points of the nationalists, but I think there are things we could do to improve public schools that would be much more effective than what they want. I have also seen what happened when our state government got heavily involved in curriculum with the Minnesota Standards, and in the area of American History, I thought their finished product was horrible. I'm afraid if the federal government does it, it might even be worse. But then on the other hand, maybe it couldn't be worse. So on this one, consider me on the fence.

Should education be compulsory?

2008-02-23T05:55:00.000-08:00

My last post was based on disagreements I had with Benny the Troll, who does not believe in public education at all. This post is based on something that I actually agree with Benny about--compulsory education. I not only think that education should not be compulsory, I think that it's impossible for it to be compulsory. The only thing that we can make compulsory is attendance, and I think it's a mistake to do that. So libertarians, unite! I'm with you on this one!

The idea of compulsory education is based on the idea that we can give someone an education. We can't give anyone an education, but we can give them the opportunity. In order to take advantage of that opportunity, however, young people are going to have to listen, they're going to have to read, they're going to have to study, and they're going to have to try. But what if some people don't want that opportunity? Should we force them to be in school anyway? I don't think so.

There are some parents who don't want their children given shots to inoculate them from certain diseases. Courts have ruled that the state can give children those shots anyway, because otherwise they might catch the disease and then infect other kids. Education doesn't work that way--in a way it is just the opposite. We can't inject anyone with education, and when we force people into our schools who don't want to be there, that is when they "infect" other children.

It's sad that there are some parents in America who don't care if their kids get an education, but I'm afraid they do exist. If some kids are unfortunate enough to have nitwit parents who don't want them to go to school, we should let the parents have their way. And I say that because the chances of those children getting any meaningful benefit from public education are either slim or none, and they will only make it more difficult for us to work with kids who we really have a chance to help. In reality, parents can do that now simply by saying that they will homeschool their children. I don't mean that as a slam on parents who actually DO educate their kids at home, but I know that in our district there are some parents who say they are homeschooling their kids where absolutely nothing of the kind is happening.

But what about kids who decide they don't want to be in school, regardless of their parents wishes? When should we allow them to make that decision? I'm not sure exactly how old they should have to be, but I definitely think it's something younger than it is now. I know many would argue that we can't allow young people to make such an important decision, but how many fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen-year-olds who have developed this mindset can we expect to "save"? I don't know what that number is, but I doubt that it comes close to equaling the number of kids who they end up dragging down with them.

All students in any school fall somewhere on a continuum of whether or not they actually want an education. At one end of the continuum, we have the students for whom getting an education is very important. Nothing is going to sway them. At the other end we have kids who have no desire to get an education, and don't want to be there at all. It's going to be very difficult to do anything to sway them, either. Most students, however, fall somewhere in the middle. Many of them have heard that getting an education is important, but they've never really given it much thought, and they're really not committed to it. These are the kids who are most subject to the influence of other students--they can be tipped one way or the other. If they hang around with kids who believe that education is important, they will begin to believe it's important, too. But put enough students who believe that education is worthless in classes with those kids, and we will tip a lot of them the wrong way. I think that's happening in too many places right now.

I want to emphasize that I am all for allowing young people to come back to school any time they make the decision that they want an education. I don't care how young or old they are or how long they've been out of school. Wouldn't it be a wonderful influence in a school to have young people who have left school for a while, taken a minimum wage type job, and then decided that maybe education is something they could use?

You want educational reform? Well, here is a revolutionary educational reform idea: Let's try reserving education for those who actually want it.

Big John is makin' a comeback!

2008-02-19T17:42:00.000-08:00

About a month ago I did a post (Priorities) on my father-in-law, John Engberg, who was gravely ill. When I left school in the middle of the day last January, I brought along my suit, because I assumed my stay in the Twin Cities would be capped off with his funeral. I'm writing this because I thought that anyone who had read that post might be interested in John's progress, and I'm happy to tell you that he's making a comeback.

Our hockey team had no games this weekend, so I was able to drive down to see John, who has now been moved to a care center. The last time I saw him, he was completely unresponsive, and he had more tubes coming out of his body than I'd care to count. To catch sight of him this weekend as I wandered around looking for the correct room on the second floor of that care center, sitting up in a wheel chair, hair nicely groomed, and waving to me was one of the most gratifying feelings I've ever had. Once I got into the room, he was full of questions about how my JV hockey team was doing and what I thought the chances were that our varsity would make it down for the state tournament. Unbelievable!

John has a cancer called multiple myeloma, and he's got a long way to go including a ton of physical therapy, but he sure seems to be off to a good start. The first major hurdle has been learning to swallow again, something he couldn't do at all when he first came out of his coma. He finally had his feeding tube taken out last week, and he's eating mashed up potatoes, mashed up peas, mashed up meatballs, and mashed up everything. It takes intense concentration for him for each swallow, but as he told my wife and me as we sat next to him, "If I want to live, I've got to eat!"

American public schools: abducton, theft & indoctrination?

2008-02-18T12:52:00.000-08:00

In my last post, "Benny the Troll" submitted this comment:

The answer to improving education in America, the ONLY right answer, is to subject it to free market forces instead of government control. You are beating your head against a wall, Dennis, trying to make any progress within the present system of mandatory attendance (abduction), mandatory curriculum (indoctrination), and financing by taxation (theft). And you wonder why so many parents don't seem to want to be involved in public education.

You would probably say that if we removed the government from the provision of education, some would go without. But do you honestly think that many don't go without now?

Before there were public schools in America, literacy rates were high and education was in demand. And that demand was being met by market forces. There was no reason whatsoever for the government to get involved in education, except to indoctrinate young minds into subservience to the state. In that respect, public education has worked remarkably well.

I really do appreciate every comment that is added to my posts. If anything makes any of my posts interesting it is those comments, and it is the ones who disagree with my point of view that make them most interesting of all. Nevertheless, I must say that Benny's comment reflects a mindset that drives me crazy. But, I owe Benny a debt of gratitude because there is nothing like reading something that drives me crazy that inspires me to write posts.

I want to respond to just about everything Benny said, but I don't like long posts, so I'm just going to hit a couple of his points in this one. Benny says, "Before there were public schools in America, literacy rates were high and education was in demand." I have heard that type of statement from public education bashers before, but I have to wonder what that statistic is based on. Who gathered that information and compiled those statistics? What is "high," and just who were the literacy rates "high" for? Did they include the four million slaves in the country? Did they include farming families out on the frontier? Did they include immigrants from Ireland coming over here as a result of the potato famine?

I have to admit that I have no idea what our national literacy rates were before public education became widespread in the country, but I do know some things. I do know that Southern states came up with literacy tests for voting, because they knew that most freed-blacks were illiterate due to not having any education. I do know that they found it necessary to provide a special provision to allow illiterate whites to vote despite the test. That would seem to suggest that the number of illiterate whites in the South was significant. Things like that make me question the statement that literacy rates were high before public education.

On the one hand, public education bashers blast us because we are so ineffective that we can't teach kids anything. In the next breath, however, they argue that we are so effective that we are able to "indoctrinate" the youth of America. Indoctrinate them to what? We have a Republican president right now. Are we indoctrinating our kids to be good little Republicans? Or are we indoctrinating them to be good little Democrats since that's the party that controls Congress? And if that's the case, what were we doing when the Republicans controlled Congress? Or what were we doing when Clinton was president? Or does it go state by state? Well, then what are we doing in Minnesota, because we have a Republican governor and a Democratic legislature? Man, I'm getting really confused here! Would someone please tell me what I am supposed to be indoctrinating my kids to, because I'm getting a headache trying to figure it out.

Although many might disagree with me on this next point, I have to admit that I have little sympathy for those who are constantly whining about taxes. The fact is that the United States has one of the lowest tax rates of all industrialized nations. Iceland and Ireland are below us, and that's about it. My generation has done a wonderful job of convincing our federal government that our taxes are too high, and we now have a nine trillion dollar debt to show for it. That's okay, though. We'll just let our kids worry about that. After all, they owe us something for all that indoctrination.

Choice? Standards? Balderdash!

2008-02-12T05:45:00.000-08:00

I am now in the middle of reading Left Back, Diane Ravitch's history of reform in American education. One of Ravitch's clear messages is that we should be wary of movements. After having spent nearly all of my life in American public schools--first as a student, then as a teacher--I can only say, "Amen!"

Over the weekend Joanne Jacobs ran a post on competing articles from Sol Stern and Lisa Snell in which they debate which of the two educational movements of the early 21st century, "choice" or "standards," is the true answer to improving education in America. As someone who actually works in the classroom, it is frustrating for me to read their thoughts. They are both so certain that the movements they advocate are the answers, but it seems to me so obvious that neither of them will lead to much improvement. And while they argue about which of their fads is better, they, like all the other experts and policy makers, ignore a simple change that could do so much.

Lisa Snell insists that what is needed is choice, and Stern has also been a strong advocate of that in the past. Well, I have news for both of them. The most important reason that kids from the low-performing urban schools, that Snell is most concerned about, need choice is to get away from all of the disruptive and unmotivated kids they have in their classrooms that make true education impossible. We have always heard that kids in urban schools need choice to get away from poor instruction and uncaring teachers, but I suspect that some of the teachers in those schools are more caring and better than many of the rest of us could ever hope to be. Those teachers are working in incredibly difficult situations, and I can only imagine how frustrating it must be for them to constantly hear that they would improve if only there were competition to make them try harder. After promoting it for years, even Stern has given up on that idea.

Stern, a strong critic of so-called "progressive" teaching methods, now believes that standards will force us to improve our instruction methods. Well, I've got news for him. If I have enough disruptive and unmotivated kids in a class, like I do in one of my classes this year, it doesn't matter what my instruction methods are--not much learning is going to take place. I have had a great deal of success during my teaching career, but this year I have one class out of my six that has me tearing my hair out. I have a sneaking suspicion that this class is giving me a taste of the conditions that teachers in some of those urban districts face with regularity.

The answer to improving education in America is maddeningly simple, and every so often Sol Stern stumbles over it without seeing it. He says that one of the reasons he admires small Catholic schools is because they "enforce order in the classroom." Well, how about giving those of us in public school classrooms the power to enforce order in our classrooms? In order to do that, when some kids behave horribly day after day, and when some other kids make absolutely no effort to succeed day after day, it has to be much easier for us to remove them from our classes than it is now. Then we wouldn't need to give kids a "choice" to find a different school. Then we can actually take a look at which instruction methods work best, because they will matter. I don't know any public school teachers who don't want to be able to enforce order in their classrooms, but we are forced to be unbearably tolerant. If Sol Stern and Lisa Snell really want to improve public education in America, why don't they help us do something about that? That is a reform that would do more to improve public education than choice or standards ever could. I guarantee it!

I-pods and underachievement

2008-02-09T05:22:00.000-08:00

I admit it. There are more and more symptoms that I am becoming a crotchety old man. I try to fight it, but sometimes I just can't help it. One of the things that brings out the crotchety old man in me is seeing kids walking down the halls in our school wearing I-pods.

It seems to me that walking in the hallways is a social situation. People are walking next to you, people are walking toward you, many of whom are friends, and in a small school, nearly all of whom are at least acquaintances. To be walking through all of this with your ears plugged, grooving to your music, trying to be totally in your own world and ignoring everyone seems so unsocial as to be bordering on rudeness.

My own kids bought me an I-pod for Christmas last year, and I do use it once in awhile. But I only use it when I'm by myself. I tried wearing it one day when I walked from my house to school on a Saturday afternoon, and even that felt wrong. Walking to school isn't exactly a social situation, but it's not unusual to come upon someone walking the other way, or to wave at people driving by in their cars, so I just felt like I was missing something. But these kids wear theirs in the middle of a hallway crowded with people they know. It boggles my mind.

This last week, I decided to make a mental note of just who the kids were who actually wore their I-pods while walking through our hallways during school hours. The results of my rather informal survey were incredibly consistent. The first seven kids that I saw with the I-pods were all kids who had failed or were presently failing my American History class. Then I saw some ninth-graders who I didn't know, and I asked teachers standing next to me how they did in class. Everyone of them was an underachiever.

So in our school, at least, there is a very high correlation between wearing I-pods in the hallways and underachievement. The natural assumption to this would be that our underachievers are turned off by school, and the I-pods are simply a symptom of that. But I'm not so sure that that's all it is. The number of underachievers in our school has skyrocketed during the last few years. Is it possible that I-pods and other gadgets like them are not just symptoms? Is it possible that they are contributing to this in some way? I don't know.

Teaching and coaching

2008-02-03T18:57:00.000-08:00

As a teacher-coach, I appreciated this article about coaches by Tanya Judd Pucella in Teacher Magazine. Pucella is a self-described "recovering anti-coach" who ended up marrying one.

Pucella had reason to be an "anti-coach." As she says:

"I was a social studies teacher—the department most often dominated by coaches—and eventually found myself as one of only three teachers who did not also have a coaching assignment. Many of our coach-teachers matched the traditional stereotype. They tolerated a classroom assignment for a few hours a day so they could pursue their true profession on the fields and courts of our campus. They rarely attended our department meetings and avoided service on teacher committees. Professional development? Forget it! Their classrooms tended to be dominated by worksheets and seat work, rather than instruction designed to meet identified student needs."

Unfortunately, there are too many of those stereotypical teacher-coaches that Pucella describes, but allow me to say a few words in their defense. The demands on head coaches are enormous, and they've grown dramatically since I first became a teacher coach 34 years ago. It used to be that coaches were expected to be decent men who knew a little bit about the game. Some of the towering figures in early Minnesota high school hockey were wonderful men who cared greatly about their players, but when it came to coaching, they did little more than throw the puck out on the ice and let the kids go at it. If they had enough talented kids, they would win. If they didn't, they would lose, but they wouldn't have to worry about being fired unless they did something incredibly stupid. In fact, they were still highly respected in their communities. My, how things have changed!

Now coaches are are expected to run highly sophisticated practices, and each practice should be different from every other. They are expected to have each game videotaped, and then they are expected to spend hours analyzing those videos. Opponents are to be thoroughly scouted. Coaches are also expected spend time working with their youth (or feeder) programs, and to attend meetings of various boards dealing with those programs. This is not to mention the hours spent on buses going to and coming from games and scrimmages. And then, no matter how thorough and conscientious and inspiring they've been, if there are too many years with not enough wins and not enough championships, they can expect to be unceremoniously dismissed.

I was appointed as a co-head coach in 2004, but after two years, I decided that I had to step down. Trying to do the kind of job that I wanted to do with my coaching and teaching responsibilities was overwhelming. If I'd have continued in that position, I'd have either begun to slip in my teaching or slip in my coaching, or burned out on both. And my kids were grown, so I didn't have the family responsibilities that many younger teacher-head coaches have. The demands on them can only be described as impossible.

Yet, as Pucella's article makes clear, there are teacher-head coaches, and even teacher-coach-parents out there who manage to do a great job at all of their responsibilities. Quite frankly, I don't know how they do it.

Ah, for the good ol' days!

2008-01-29T14:09:00.000-08:00

I got this via email today, and I loved it. I don't mean to plagarize, but I have no idea where it originated, and I really wanted to share it with anyone who hasn't already seen it. Here it is:

Scenario: Johnny and Mark get into a fistfight after school.

1957 - Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up buddies for life.
2007 - Police called, SWAT team arrives, arrests Johnny and Mark. Charge them with assault, both expelled even though Johnny started it.

Scenario: Jeffrey won't be still in class, disrupts other students.

1957 - Jeffrey sent to office and given a good paddling by the Principal. Returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class again.
2007 - Jeffrey given huge doses of Ritalin. Becomes a zombie. Tested for ADD. School gets extra money from state because
Jeffrey is determined to have a disability.

Scenario: Billy breaks a window in his neighbor's car and his Dad gives him a whipping with his belt.

1957 - Billy works off the car window repair and learns to be more careful, grows up normal, goes to college, and becomes a successful businessman.
2007 - Billy's dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy removed to foster care and joins a gang. State psychologist tells Billy's sister that she remembers being abused herself and their dad goes to prison. Billy's mom has affair with psychologist.

Scenario: Mark gets a headache and takes some aspirin to school

1957 - Mark shares aspirin with Principal out on the smoking dock.
2007 - Police called, Mark expelled from school for drug violations. His car is then searched for drugs and weapons.

Scenario: Pedro fails high school English.

1957 - Pedro goes to summer school, passes English, goes to college.
2007 - Pedro's cause is taken up by state. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that teaching English as a requirement for graduation is racist. ACLU files class action lawsuit against state school system and Pedro's English teacher. English banned from core curriculum. Pedro given diploma anyway but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he cannot speak English.

Scenario: Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers from 4th of July, puts them in a model airplane paint bottle, blows up a red ant bed.

1957 - Ants die.
2007 - BATF, Homeland Security, FBI called. Johnny charged with domestic terrorism, FBI investigates parents, siblings removed from home, computers confiscated, Johnny's Dad goes on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly on an airline again.

Scenario: Johnny falls while running during recess and scrapes his knee. He is found crying by his teacher, Mary. Mary hugs him to comfort him.

1957 - In a short time, Johnny feels better and goes on playing.
2007 - Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces 3 years in State Prison. Johnny undergoes 5 years of therapy.

There are reasons why they call them the, "good, old days."

Communication is wonderful, but............

2008-01-25T06:41:00.000-08:00

A number of years ago, I read The Death of Common Sense by Philip K. Howard. The book made more sense than any other book I've ever read. One of Howard's points in the book was that in government and education we should hire good people and allow them to make decisions. But instead of that, we end up micromanaging by making all kinds of rules and policies for them, and frequently those rules and policies, although well intended, end up doing more harm than good by tying the hands of those who have to carry them out. I know from experience that that has often been the case in public education, and our school recently had a sterling example of it.

Our entire high school faculty received an email from our administration last Friday that showed micromanaging at its worst. I know that there are some teachers who are knee-jerk anti-administration types, but I have never been one of them. The email we got, however, left me furious. I'm furious because of the lack of respect it showed for those of us who take our jobs very seriously, but I'm also furious because of its stupidity.

The email directed that all faculty members were immediately to begin posting lesson plans for all of our classes each day on our school's website. No questions, no discussion, nothing. This item was pushed through by a parent on our school board who decided we should do this because a neighboring school district does.

It's not that I'm unwilling to use technology to improve communication with parents. Beginning last year, I began inviting parents, especially those with kids who weren't doing well, to join my American History address group so I could send them schedules of upcoming assignments each week via email. This would be targeted to the parents who wanted them, and they would receive them each week, so there would be no need for them to go searching for them on our school's website. No one ordered me to do this. In fact no one even suggested it to me. I just thought it was a good idea, so I did it because I take pride in the job I do. I felt like a professional.

I am not going to feel that way about following our administration's order. Yes, I guess our school board does have the authority to issue such an edict, but a lack of respect for teachers was literally oozing from this directive. I know that there are those in the public who believe that teachers have a cake-job and that we are all lazy, and the email we received seemed to reflect that opinion. Teachers are really all looking to collect a paycheck while doing as little work as possible, we aren't really interested in doing a good job, so we must be ordered to do things that are good for the students.

As I indicated earlier, I also found this directive so infuriating because it so obviously came from someone who has no idea what we do. Due to cuts our school system has been making for the last several years, many of us feel completely maxed out on our workloads. Throughout my career I have always enjoyed tinkering with my curriculum and trying to find better ways to teach things. This often means adding something to what I've been doing. But those cuts our school has been making have meant more classes for some of us and larger class sizes for all of us, and I've gotten to the point where I just can't add any more. For example, the gentleman who had the AP American Government class before I took it had three other classes to teach besides the AP Government class, and two preparation periods and one study hall. I now have the AP Government class, five other classes, and one preparation period. Besides that, I have larger American History classes than I ever had before. I'm sorry, but I can't give any more time and effort to my teaching than I already am--not without getting to the point where burn-out becomes a real possibility, and that is something I am determined to avoid. I am not the only teacher in our school who feels this way. I talked to one teacher the other day who gets to school every day at 4AM to prepare. She asked, "Do they want me to come at 3?"

Speaking for myself, I need to use my teaching time as efficiently as I possibly can. I began my system of emailing my weekly schedule to American History parents because it made sense for those parents in that class. I regularly give homework in that class, and there are a number of kids who are very disorganized, immature, or lazy, and having parents aware of what is expected and when could be helpful. On the other hand, it makes no sense for me to do the same thing for my Basic American History class because all the work is done in class. There is no need for parents to be reminding kids to do their homework. And my AP Government class is a college class, and I am supposed to be giving them a college type experience. Should I have to count on the mommies and daddies of so-called college students to hound them to do their homework?

Now I am going to have to do exactly that. The problem is that, since I feel like I'm doing as much as I can, if extra duties are going to be added to my workload, then something will have to go. And that something will have to be in the area of instruction. I will have to quit doing something that I've been doing because I believed it would help students learn more or better. Maybe I'll have one of my classes do less writing, or maybe I'll have to cut back on evaluating assignments which, of course, means that more students will decide not to do those assignments. It will also definitely mean that the next time I get an idea for something extra I can do that I think might make me a more effective teacher, I won't be able to do it.

I am all for communicating with parents, but I am already spending a ridiculous amount of time and energy on that--weekly progress reports for every student I have with an IEP, a minimum of two progress per quarter to parents of any students getting C- or below, progress reports to parents of any students who fall into failing territory during any week during the quarter, weekly lists of failing students to the high school office, and of course, my schedule of upcoming American History assignments to parents on my email address group.

Yes, communication with parents is a wonderful thing, but you know what? The amount of time and effort I'm able to put into instruction matters, too. I want to be the best teacher I can, but in order to do that I need be given some latitude regarding the use of my time. I just wish citizens on school boards understood that.