A Perfect Mesh of Common Core Curriculum and New Technology in the Classroom

TWELVE YEARS AFTER I POSTED THIS, THE SATIRE SEEMS EVEN BETTER THAN WHEN I FIRST WROTE IT.

AND STANDARDIZED TEST SCORES HAVE GONE DOWN.

(September 20, 2025.)

A Greek temple of knowledge!
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle managed
without Common Core.

We visit a typical American classroom in the not too distant future.

 

EVILTEACH! HORRORKNOWLEDGE! 

April 1, 2025:  Two highly paid consultants, one from Wireless Generation, a leading company in the sale of education software, the other from Pearson, a major player in the testing industry, are seated in the back of John Galt’s seventh grade American history class. Neither consultant has ever taught. Yet they are here to assess how new technology, guaranteed to boost standardized test scores and company profits, is functioning. Did we just say, “Boost test scores and company profits?” 

We meant: “To enhance true learning.” 

Several surveillance cameras, all set to follow Galt’s every move, are running in the room. This is part of the push to improve schools by holding teachers totally accountable. Because let’s face it. The only person who matters in the room is the teacher. 

That’s what school reformers like to say. 

In this class every child has a computer, purchased from Amplify, a division of Wireless Generation. (Corporate motto: No Dollar Left Behind.) Galt and his students are hooked to a series of electrodes. Today, the class is trying to hold a discussion about the battle for women’s rights in the 1800s. 

“Mr. Galt,” a student named Dagney inquires, “I’ve been wondering. Who were the leaders in the fight for equality?” 

“One would be Susan B. Anthony,” Galt responds gingerly. He consults his computer to be sure Anthony is specifically mentioned in the Common Core Curriculum. She is. “Susan B. Anthony may be on the standardized test,” Galt says. “The other leader, who will not be on the test, would be Elizzzz…” 

Before he can finish his sentence, the electrodes attached to his scalp deliver a powerful shock. The smell of singed hair fills the room. 

(He was going to say: Elizabeth Cady Stanton.) 

Every student receives a flashing red warning on their screen: DANGER! MATERIAL NOT INCLUDED ON STANDARDIZED TEST! DANGER! 

A voice similar to HAL, the deranged computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey, delivers the message verbally, as well.

 

Joaquin, seated in the desk closest to the door, waits for Galt to recover. He raises a hand to add to the discussion. “I can’t understand why women weren’t granted equal rights when the U.S. Constitution was first written. My grandmother told...” 

The poor boy should have known better! 

A loud buzzing noise, followed by Joaquin’s spastic jerking, and another computer warning, teaches Joaquin and all his curious classmates an important lesson. If it can’t be tested … it isn’t education. 

Carolyn wants to know: “What year did women finally win the right to vote?” 

ZAPPPPPP. Another shock for a foolish student. Again, computers flash warning: DANGER! MATERIAL NOT INCLUDED ON STANDARDIZED TEST! DANGER! 

Galt wants to answer. He wants to say “1920,” and note that his mother was in kindergarten by the time men got around to deciding that women were capable of voting. He wants to say to the girls in the room, “Just think. In all the long centuries of human history the dumbest man walking the face of the earth had more rights than any woman.” Galt had used this line for years – before Common Core – and remembers how it always riled up the ladies and got them interested. Now he knows if it’s not on the test, it doesn’t matter. Considering that Ohio enacted laws in 2013 to tie teacher pay to test scores, maybe it’s for the best. Still, he’s a professional. He wants his kids to learn. 

“It wasn’t just women who couldn’t vote,” he says. “Poor white men.…” 

That’s as far as he gets. Another shock is administered, and Galt jumps where he stands like a fish on an electrified line. 

He’s a stubborn man where learning is involved. He tries again, disguising his reply: “No vote. Pale skin. Poor…” ZAPPPPPP. The computer gets wise to what he’s up to and delivers a jolt. 

The consultant from Pearson makes a note: “May need to increase voltage.”

 

Perhaps in his confusion, Galt forgets where he is, in a modern U.S. classroom with all the reforms of recent years welded firmly into place. He forgets he’s expected to follow what is virtually a script. He is going to tell students that in the summer of 1964, Congress debated a massive civil rights bill designed to guarantee equal treatment to people of all races, religions, and ethnic backgrounds. He is going to explain that Representative Howard W. Smith from Virginia stepped forward to block the legislation. Smith feared a world in which blacks might win equal rights. (Galt is also thinking he may bring up the Loring v. Virginia case, which overturned state laws against interracial marriage three years later.) As Galt knows, Smith devised a clever ruse to derail the bill. He suggested on the floor of the House that the word “sex” be added to the bill. 

Surely, he imagined, no sane person could vote for a bill which granted equal rights to blacks and women!  

Galt is going to tell this story because he thinks it reveals the ludicrous nature of prejudice in all its forms. He tries to get it out by talking fast – telling the story at preternatural speed – and the cameras and electrodes and computer are baffled for precious seconds. He gets in “summer of 1964” and “Howard W. Smith” but when he mentions the word “sex” the system catches up and gives him a mighty shock. 

When the smoke round his head clears Galt sees a brave seventh grader in the front row put up a hand. The boy wants to ask a question about gay marriage and discrimination. But he decides it’s not worth the risk and lowers his hand. 

Galt tells the class he needs to sit. You know, recover his wits. He consults his materials, prepared over the course of forty-five years in the classroom, and tries to figure out what he’s allowed to cover. He has a lengthy reading prepared on the fight for women’s rights but realizes that on a standardized test there won’t be more than a single question on this topic. Should he include extra material? If his classes learn , but what they learn isn’t tested, does that count as learning? 

If someone asks a question in the forest and the tree falls on his head and no one hears the answer, does it matter? 

Isn’t that how the riddle goes? 

Maybe there’s still some way to slip this reading past the Common Core censors. He knows, over the years, that students have always found it interesting. 

It reads in part: 

The ideal woman [in the 1800s] was a wife and mother. And wives must be content within this sphere. One expert on women, a man, by chance, argued that bed-making was “good exercise.” He continued: “There is more to be learned about pouring out tea and coffee than most young ladies are willing to believe.” 

“A woman is a nobody,” one newspaper commented. “A wife is everything.”   

The handout Galt has always used continues in that vein for ten pages. One writer compares men to elm trees and women to ivy vines. They need a man to lean on for support. The husband controls all property, including his wife’s paycheck (if any). Judges uphold the right of husbands to beat their wives for nagging. A Massachusetts judge does order a husband not use a stick any bigger around than his thumb. 

At this point, in an era before standardized everything, standardized tests, standardized texts, standardized humanity, Galt would have illustrated the point by picking up his pointer and whipping it through the air. The “whooshing” noise would make it clear how much damage a rod of similar thickness might do. 

Now, Galt knows better. Too much depth. Depth has nothing to do with Common Core Curriculum. Depth of knowledge can’t be tested. 

He remembers how he used to tell classes about that writer in 1850, who wrote about elm trees and ivy vines, and warned that without a man, a woman was doomed to fall in the dust. The girls who played sports always laughed at that story … but again, it’s not going to be on any Pearson test. 

No sense telling it now. 

Then Galt thinks about all the damage fools who claim to be fixing education do and it makes him angry to the core. (Irony intended.) Like all good teachers, he has dedicated himself to imparting all the knowledge he can. He is determined to broaden today’s discussion. He will tell his classes how it was for women in this country even in the 1960s and 70s. He will explain how his old high school tried to start a girl’s track team in 1967, and how almost everyone thought the idea was absurd. Only two girls showed up for tryouts. Galt will emphasize how much attitudes – what we think we can do and what we think we cannot do – shape our lives. He believes this is a lesson he can impart to students. He feels it in his bones. 

He feels the lesson matters. 

They will discuss the idea that women were once considered too delicate to run long distances. He will throw out the example of Paula Radcliffe, who set the record for women in 2003, running the London Marathon in 2 hours and 15 minutes, a pace of 5:09 per mile. He will circle back again to the idea that women are weak like ivy vines. He thinks he can plant a seed, hint to all the girls that they should take on any challenge … and Galt will make it clear the same attitude equally applies to boys. 

“When I was in high school,” he begins. 

ZAAAAP. 

“They said girls were too weak.…” 

ZAAAAAAAAAAP! 

“Paula Radcliffe.…” 

ZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!! 

Student computers are now blinking wildly: DANGER! NON-STANDARDIZED LEARNING! EVILTEACH! HORRORKNOWLEDGE! ACADEMICKILL! DANGER! DANGER! 

By now Galt is prone on the floor. He looks bad. He raises his head slightly and gasps. “Women … not … ivy vines.…” 

ZZZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!

 

* 

The consultants shoot each other knowing looks. The Pearson rep makes a note to include one question on the standardized test about Susan B. Anthony. After all, you want the tests to align with the Common Core Curriculum. 

Oh hell, who cares! Pearson is making hundreds of millions of dollars annually designing more and more standardized tests. 

The consultant from Amplify is happy, too. Galt is out cold. Now the kids have no choice but to rely on their computers for some warm student-machine interaction. 

It’s U.S. education for the future.

Somehow this image seems more fitting
when we talk about
school reform today.

Emperor of A, B, C and D.

TO MAKE THE CASE AGAINST STANDARDIZED TESTING let me write as if I were still teaching today.

Imagine that I am in my thirty-third year in the classroom. Lately, all I hear is that my primary purpose is to “teach to the test.”

I am a veteran teacher, however. There is a right way to teach and a wrong way to teach. And I don’t want to be Emperor of A, B, C and D.

I want to teach.

I am a veteran educator. That means I tend to be skeptical because I’ve been around. When I first took a spot at the  front of the classroom there were no standardized tests. Somehow I managed. I set my own very high standards. It was not until the late 80’s that Ohio and other states implemented the first big batteries of these kinds of tests.

State tests produced limited fruit in the 90’s. (Remember: I was there.) In 2002 those tests were replaced with new tests in response to No Child Left Behind. In Ohio one of the tests at the eighth grade level covered social studies, my area of expertise.

My colleagues and I devoted hundreds of hours to preparing to teach to this test. It was phased in slowly and died abruptly. When the social-studies sub-test proved hopelessly flawed the State of Ohio killed off its own child in 2009.

Now, in 2013 (for this example), my principal is harping on the idea that we must focus on a new set of standards tied to the Common Core Curriculum. I am a veteran teacher. I am skeptical. I doubt these “core” standards will make any real difference.

WELL, NO. I EXPECT THEM TO DO HARM.

I am also a grumbler, especially when bureaucrats interfere with teachers. I grumble with friends at lunch. “I already know which students are meeting my high standards,” I inform colleagues seated at a table in the lounge.

“You know how I ‘measure?’”

“It’s called ‘grading,’ I think,” replies our resident staff comedian.

We all enjoy a laugh; but inside we are dying. Unfortunately—and I use that word with clear intent—we are dedicated teachers. We want students to learn as much as possible. In an era of standardized learning that can be dangerous to any educator.

I have spent my entire career on the prowl for good material to use in my classes. This is one of my strengths, this willingness to pursue knowledge. I feel it in my bones—that this pursuit never ends—and see it as my primary goal to fire pupils with a love of learning.

My strengths are not standardized.

Twenty-five years ago, at the dawn of The Age of the Testing, I stumbled upon a collection of poems by Langston Hughes. I don’t know if other social studies teachers have read them. I doubt bureaucrats who drew up the new standards bothered.

Yet, I know one poem is especially moving. Each year I use it as part of a unit on the Era of Reconstruction (1865-1877):

“Merry-Go-Round” 

Colored child at carnival: 

Where is the Jim Crow section 

On this merry-go-round, 

Mister, cause I want to ride? 

Down South where I come from

White and colored 

Can’t sit side by side. 

Down South on the train 

There’s a Jim Crow car. 

On the bus we’re put in the back— 

But there ain’t no back 

To a merry-go-round! 

Where’s the horse 

For a kid that’s black? 

The question today is not whether this poem is good nor whether it engages students. The question is:  Will this be on the standardized test?

(It will not.)

I decide to use it anyway. The day we use it I ask 150 teens to answer two questions (see below). I do this because I know my students will fill the classroom with creative comment. I use “Merry-Go-Round” because I know true learning comes in a thousand disguises:

1. Why do you think Hughes chose a child as focus for this poem?

2. What do you think the poet was trying to say about Jim Crow segregation by using a merry-go-round?


EVEN BEFORE WE START THIS NEW UNIT here is something else I know—because I am a veteran teacher—because I have eyes, ears and a nose. I know that adults in this country have no real knowledge of the Reconstruction Era.

To put it plainly, students won’t need to remember much from this era of our nation’s history. If they don’t know why President Andrew Johnson was impeached they’ll survive.

Before we start the unit I study the manual of standards the State of Ohio went to great trouble to develop. For purposes of this example, I refer to the standards from 2008, the year I retired. (Remember, this whole set of standards went into the dumpster.)

First, I know that these standards were drawn up by functionaries in Columbus, Ohio and pushed for by bureaucrats in Washington, D. C.

I know that none of these people have ever tried to engage a room filled with teens. Here is all the guidance they offer:

INDICATOR 11: Analyze the consequences of Reconstruction with emphasis on:

A. President Lincoln’s assassination and the ensuing struggle for control of Reconstruction, including the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson.

B. Attempts to protect the rights of and enhance opportunities for the freedmen, including the basic provisions of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution.

C. The Ku Klux Klan and the enactment of the black codes.

That’s it for the vaunted state standards. So, what exactly do I teach? What do the bureaucrats want my students to know?

Here’s the problem. We are expected to teach to a test that includes only fifty questions. (The social studies test used in Ohio from 2003 to 2009 covered three years of material in that many questions.) So, there’s no way a standardized test will include more than two items from the Reconstruction period. There’s a fair chance there will be none.

I don’t want to look for the single question in the academic haystack. I don’t have any desire to be Emperor of A, B, C and D.

I don’t believe learning can be boiled down to a few paltry multiple-choice questions.

Now I know that unless a person is named or a document  mentioned or a term highlighted in the standardized curriculum those names and concepts cannot be turned into questions when it’s time for the test.

I look at the crappy standards provided. Langston Hughes isn’t mentioned.

What about John Wilkes Booth? His name is also missing. So, should I really expect students to know who he was? Every time an assassination occurs in this country it leads to comparisons, and people bring up Booth and Abraham Lincoln (or Lee Harvey Oswald and John F. Kennedy).

I notice that the standards also fail to mention the term “Jim Crow.” This concerns be because I read history for a living and almost no one today mentions “black codes.” Instead, those who wish to discuss race use the term “Jim Crow” segregation or speak of the “Jim Crow” era in sports. For this reason, if I am left to follow own judgment I am going to ask my classes to know this term.

The danger is clear. Do I risk asking students to learn useful material if they won’t be tested? If I teach more than required am I ahead when it comes to standards of learning? Or do we only care about what ends up on the test?

I happen to be a decent writer. So, for years I have created my own materials. I have a reading about “Jim Crow” laws to give to students, one that includes more than seventy examples of unfair laws.

I understand, of course, that none of my teens will ever need to know seventy examples. But the cumulative impact of all the limitations makes a deep impression on my classes.

You can’t measure emotional impact in A’s and B’s and C’s. You can use all the letters in the alphabet. You can’t do it.

The day to begin the unit arrives—and I ask my classes to list five ways blacks and whites were legally separated. This sparks quick interest and just about everyone throws up a hand. I know, from spending years in a classroom, that my kids will almost always end up giving the same handful of examples. These are:

SCHOOLS
BUSES
RESTAURANTS
DRINKING FOUNTAINS
and SPORTS.

My problem is that I want to go deeper. I want to set high standards. I want my students—almost all of whom happen to be white—to grasp the depth and breadth of the racial divide that once existed in this country.

That’s where my handout enters the picture. The title is taken from an article by I. F. Stone, “A Twilight between Liberty and Freedom.”

The story opens:

The sad era of “Jim Crow” began officially in 1887. Florida started the process by ordering the separation of black and white passengers on railroads. Mississippi copied the idea, adding “Colored” and “White Only” waiting rooms. Other Southern states fell in line. But most made one exception: if a black nursemaid was caring for a white baby. Soon states like Alabama and Georgia had separate homes for the deaf, blind, and mentally ill. The races were divided in prisons and on chain gangs. By 1890 Jackson, Mississippi had instituted “Jim Crow” rules in city cemeteries.

“Think about it,” I say to my classes. “You’re blind! Isn’t everyone black if you’re blind?” I close my eyes and do a pantomime of a sightless person searching for a Negro.

I always put my hands on some student’s head and ask, “Are you black, because if you are, I don’t like you!”

This always gets a laugh.

“What about cemeteries?” I add. “Do any of you think you might care who ends up buried next to you?” The kids laugh again and I know they are laughing at the idea of segregation. I believe they are seeing inequality as a mockery of what we say we stand for in this country.

The reading continues:

After 1915, Oklahoma required “separate phone booths for white and colored patrons [customers].” South Carolina factory workers were paid at different windows, used different stairways and could not use the same “drinking water buckets, cups, dippers or glasses.” In a move of stunning stupidity, Birmingham, Alabama made it “unlawful for a Negro and a white person to play together” at dominoes.

Checkers was also forbidden!

In a police-officer-like voice I shout, “Drop the checkers and come out with your hands up!”

To teens (who tend to be naturally fair-minded) it seems unfathomable anyone ever thought such laws were necessary.

I don’t want to blame the South only. So we turn to examples from the North where my own grandfather insisted on “Jim Crow” seating in his theaters in Akron, Ohio. I take time to relate a story once told me by an elderly black gentleman, about how black folk had to sit in the balcony, and how hard it was to resist the temptation to throw peanuts at the white folks below.

Then we keep reading:

The list of rules was as long as human imagination is twisted…Blood banks kept Negro blood on different shelves. “Public libraries” in the South denied blacks the right to check out books! Southern gas stations had three bathrooms. One was for “WHITE MEN,” one for “WHITE WOMEN.”

A third was marked “COLORED.”

During most of my career, Loveland, where I taught, had a single black teacher. I use him as an example. Both of us were born in 1949, I explain. “If Mr. Battle’s family pulled up to the same gas station as the Viall family, the Battles can’t go at the same time. Members have to take turns.”

“Think of how your mother would feel,” I add. You make it personal and every kid understands.

At this point, there are a hundred directions you can take. All involve learning. In 2013, one of the kids is sure to bring up gays when talk turns to discrimination. So we discuss that as long as it holds kids’ interest. Since the topic is controversial, I let students argue out their own ideas, adding very little input. Eventually, we spend part of a day going over the Hughes’ poem. For homework I ask students to draw a picture to show how “Jim Crow” laws made it hard for blacks to live full lives as citizens. An artistic young man in my fifth bell class draws a checkerboard seen from above. A white hand is holding a red piece, ready to jump. A black hand rests idly at the other side of the board.

Every year we discuss the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments as required. In addition, I ask students to do a reading from Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington. I believe his efforts to educate himself and other freed slaves are inspirational, even if you can’t measure inspiration on a test.

(Examples provided in an auxiliary post.)

Normally, I include a few details about discrimination directed towards Japanese-Americans after the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor. My students love the story of Daniel Inouye, a Japanese-American war hero. So I tell it every year—because it works.

(See auxiliary post.)

TO BE HONEST, I HAVE NO DESIRE to be Emperor of A, B, C and D.

I want to lead students in a thousand directions. So:  we discuss the U. S. Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia. That’s the 1967 case that put an end to state laws against interracial marriage. You don’t see it in the standards, but I throw out the word “lynching” and expect my kids to know the definition. I show them several harrowing pictures. (See auxiliary post.) One victim is chained to a tree and twisted in death agonies. The poor fellow has been killed when a mob uses a blow torch to heat up the heavy chain. Another victim, neck broken, head twisted sideways, is Leo Frank, a Jew lynched for his “crimes” in Georgia in 1915.

Even in America, students should realize that discrimination based on religion has been common. That means, of course, that the subject of anti-Muslim feelings in the United States after 9/11 may come up if we choose to examine it.

Naturally, we talk about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. And because I once read Crusade for Justice, the autobiography of Ida Wells, I may throw out her story. Wells was tossed from a train in 1883 after adamantly refusing to give up a seat in the “Whites Only” car and retreat to the “Colored” car in timely fashion. She had to be pried out of her place, but put up a hell of a fight before a conductor and two white gentlemen could subdue her. In the end, however, they dragged the African American educator off the car and deposited her by the side of the tracks miles from her destination.

You see. This is how my strengths come into play—through what I bring to the classroom—why  standardized testing is crazy.

In the process of covering this topic I have managed over the years to get hundreds of students to read To Kill a Mockingbird and a significant number to read Native Son by Richard Wright, the story of a confused young black man growing up in 1920s Chicago. I read this last novel in college but I can get some teens to read it in eighth grade.

This is not how one behaves if one is content to be Emperor of A, B, C and D.

According to the State of Ohio I am supposed to focus on the Ku Klux Klan. How, exactly, and how much is the question. I know the Klan was huge, not just down South, but also in Ohio and Indiana. So I throw that out and add details, including the story of the Grand Wizard who lives on a farm not far from Loveland, and his painted barn roof along Interstate 71 (below).

Then I have students complete a reading from The Leopard’s Spots, written in 1902 by Thomas Dixon Jr. The book drips racism from every syllable and shocks modern-day students. In Dixon's world, the KKK are the heroes.

(See auxiliary post.)

Barn visible off Interstate 71, near Morrow, Ohio.
There's also a burned cross visible in the orchard.

My second year in a classroom I had three elderly Loveland women come in as guest speakers and talk about what it was like growing up in the 20s and 30s. One of the trio happened to be black and told us all about a time when she was nine and saw a cross burning high on a hill above her home. She described her terror and explained how her father and friends got shotguns and prepared to defend their families. Her pride in talking about her Dad was obvious. She spoke, too, of the old Loveland school she attended—a separate facility for black students.

You can’t measure the impact of her stories with four letters of the alphabet.

Sometimes my classes might look at the case of the Scottsboro Boys, nine young blacks (ages 13-19) who were placed on trial in 1931 after supposedly raping two white Alabama women. Their trial proved to be such a farce that their convictions were appealed all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court and overturned on two separate occasions. I am familiar with this story because I did a paper on the topic in graduate school—proof again that individual teachers add value to any learning process. In fact if I am teaching in 2013, I bring up the case because the State of Alabama admitted its mistakes in the case this past April and pardoned the boys posthumously.

I don’t know.

I might even suggest to interested students that they bring parents along and meet up with me and two or three other teachers at the theater. We could see the movie “42,” the story of Jackie Robinson. It’s not what you do if all you want is to be Emperor of A, B, C and D.

It’s what you would do if you care about learning.

I don't believe in an A, B, C, D education.
I do believe in all kinds of learning.
Standardized testing is a terrible way to try to improve schools.

A Predicament of Innocents

IF YOU CARE ABOUT AMERICAN EDUCATION, I’ve just finished a thought-provoking book on the subject. Odd as this may sound, it made me want to start drinking.

I mean that as a compliment.

A Predicament of Innocents by George S. Stranahan (People’s Press) is filled with good sense if we want to improve schools. Stranahan also highlights critical dangers we face moving forward.

First, let me note that the author has worked with students. I’ve been working on a book about education, myself, and it has been amazing to see how many people write about fixing schools and yet know nothing about:

a) schools—or how to fix them

b) children

c) learning

That’s what made reading the book and talking to Mr. Stranahan later both pleasant and painful. This is a gentleman who has excellent ideas about how to improve the learning experience of children and almost every one of those ideas flies in the face of accepted wisdom.

I was curious, when I spoke to him over the phone, about his background. Did he always know he wanted to be a teacher? No, the “bug bit him” during the Korean War after he was drafted into the U. S. Army. He helped train others in the use of radar systems and he’s been hanging around students now for half a century.

He knows what he’s saying. 

(Once I understood that I poured my first glass of whiskey.)

We don’t agree on every topic (he’s far more pessimistic about regular public schools and I would argue that I worked at an excellent regular public school) but his focus is clear. He cares about children. He cares about helping them become life-long learners. He knows, for example, that you don’t develop skilled learners by feeding them a diet of standardized tests. Stranahan, himself, has a PhD in physics and he’s an award-winning photographer. His wonderful photos of former students provide the skeleton for the book and his ideas give it flesh. 

The focus: students and learning.
(Photograph by George Stranahan.)

I asked him to comment on a variety of issues. Did he think that current reform efforts were helping? No, he replied. “I don’t see any reform…I see a lot more damaging use of test scores.”

(I drain my whiskey and wait a moment to clear the burning in my throat before continuing.)

As head of the Aspen Community School for twenty years, he put his ideas to the test. He hasn’t been buried in the bowels of bureaucracy, hasn’t worked for some think tank. He’s been teaching. I ask what ideas he has for improving learning in our schools. He knows education is a complex business, but if he had one magic bullet he’d push for a “democratic classroom model.”

“If a decision affects students,” he says, “then they participate in the decision-making process.”

WHAT ABOUT THE IDEA—CURRENTLY ACCEPTED by reformers, backed by political figures, and gaining traction with the general public—that we need more standardized tests to “measure” what teachers are doing? He scoffs at the notion, warning that we are “turning schools into assembly lines for kids and making assembly line workers out of teachers.”

(I pause a moment to pour a second shot. This one I down in a gulp.)

Then, is there some way we can recognized good teaching? Stranahan believes the answer is yes, that in his experience it was an “instantaneous read” whether or not a classroom was “healthy.” He says that at Aspen teachers were expected to leave classroom doors open. He could look into a room, he believed, and “read the emotional content” in the faces of students. The quality he looked for in teachers—and here I totally agree—was the ability to make a classroom “a joyful place.”

The words “standardized testing” and “joyful place” will probably never again be used in the same sentence after I finish this one.

Aspen Community School serves the needs of 113 students, with emphasis on “community.” The focus was on “learning to learn,” not learning hemmed in by Common Core Standards. As Stranahan sees it these new standards are designed to force young people to travel a single road, with no exits and one destination:  training for job/college. 

Citing the report of the “Committee of Ten,” which helped set U. S. school policy in 1892, that a college-prep education, including multiple years of Greek and Latin, was appropriate for all students, Stranahan challenges us to consider this possibility: Perhaps not all students need two years of algebra to function in adulthood.

I suppose the answer is obvious enough, since I am not writing my sentences in Greek.

(I polish off another whiskey. At this point I hope I’m not slurring my words; but George is talking sense and I know none of the Big Fixers in education reform have anywhere near as much experience with kids as he does. I just hope drink isn’t making me sound maudlin.)

Meanwhile, Stranahan has studied the Common Core Standards. Ironically, these standards are intended to clean up the mess created by the last round of reforms triggered by passage of No Child Left Behind. He notes one particular requirement—that students learn to:  “Represent addition, subtraction, multiplication and conjugation of complex numbers geometrically on the complex plane; use properties of this representation for computation. For example, (-1 + √3 i)³ = 8 because (-1 + √3 i)³ has modulus 2 and argument 120.°”

(Let’s all pause a moment to finish our computations.)

He cites a second example in A Predicament of Innocents, this time from the eighth grade math standards: “Understand that the patterns of association can also be seen as bivariate categorical data by displaying frequencies and relative frequencies in a two-way table.” He “asked our town mayor, who is also an architect, if he found this essential; he said he didn’t understand a word I said.”

(I pour my fourth whiskey. I am thinking about “mercantilism,” which is a long, sad, story, covered elsewhere.)

THERE ARE A HUNDRED TOPICS I’D LIKE TO ASK about, because here we have a gentleman who understands children, a man with learning in his marrow. I ask about the idea that we have an “achievement gap” in our poorest schools and must punish teachers who fail to close it. He sums up the dilemma in what I think is the funniest line in the entire book: “It is well-known that teaching in have-not schools is very hard work, and now you can be fired for trying.”

Unfortunately, No Child Left Behind has made what goes on in our poorest schools worse. Now education is reduced to this:  “It’s about how to correctly eliminate three out of four bubbles.”

(Down the hatch goes drink #4. I am tempted to start chugging straight from the bottle.)

I know Stranahan is making sense. That’s what troubles me to my core. I explain my theory that almost everything important educators do happens at the classroom level. “Could you ‘decapitate’ the educational system, at the level of school principal, and not do any lasting damage?” Stranahan says he believes you could. The key players are the teachers and school leaders who interact with students, the students themselves, and parents.

“Home is the hidden partner in the education of our young,” he explains. So, at Aspen they involve parents directly in the decision making processes. When they had an influx of Hispanic students they held meetings in Spanish. Often they sent out cars to pick up low-income parents and help them get to school functions.

In his book he argues that the word “teach” must be broadly defined. To “teach” should mean “any practice that causes others to develop skill or knowledge.” A good teacher in a good school is a shepherd, a minister, a nurse (“to look after carefully so as to promote growth.”). George describes the ideal relationship between student and teacher: “I take you seriously because you take me seriously.”

No reader will agree with everything Mr. Stranahan has to say; but here we have a veteran educator talking sense so often lacking in current education debate. He knows that good teachers make a difference. He also knows, “There’s just no easy answer to evaluating teachers, and if good teaching is important to us, we must be willing to look at difficult answers.”

THAT’S HOW THE BOOK ENDS, which may frustrate those who prefer definitive answers. What makes A Predicament of Innocents worth reading, however, is not that Stranahan provides answers so much as that he poses fundamental questions for our consideration. 

“What do you hope readers get out of your book?” I finally ask.

He responds: “I hope it scares them. I hope they see it as a call to action. If we don’t wake up and pay attention to what’s going on in schools, nobody else will. Childhood is a special estate. We must learn to honor that for what it is, a strong and willful beingness, playful, irreverent, spontaneous, direct and honest, representing many behaviors that we might wish to reclaim as adults. I talk about innocence, and being around children helps me to reclaim my own innocence.

“I want to get a whole school district to charter itself into a progressive school system and challenge a bit of authority on the way.”

I thank him for his time and push a button and end the call.

Maybe the whiskey is clouding my judgment; but I feel I’ve just talked to someone who has insights into the heart and soul of education. 

How Many Reformers Does it Take to Really Fix a School?

In honor of Betsy DeVos, perhaps the most clueless of all clueless school reformers in the history of cluelessness, I am running the blog post again.

Four years since I wrote this and we still have to listen to political leaders and so-called experts who know nothing about actual teaching. So here is my old post:

IF YOU’RE AN AMERICAN TEACHER it’s likely you’ve noticed a depressing trend. Deep into a second decade of all-out school reform, or third, depending on who's counting, we’re still going nowhere fast.

“Backward” doesn’t count.

School reformers seem baffled; but baffled school reformers don’t stay baffled long. When one reform plan doesn’t work they conjure up another plan. They’re school reformers for god sakes. That’s just what they do.

Perhaps we need to look at schools like automobiles to grasp why it is we’re not speeding down the intellectual Interstate like the reformers say we must. Imagine that there are three autos, all broken down alongside I-10, in the Arizona desert. The drivers are three real teachers. Each has been carrying five passengers, five students. One car is a new Lexus LX 570. The second is a 2006 Honda Civic. The third is a battered 1972 Chevrolet Impala.

None of them will run.

A bus load of school reformers heading for a convention in Las Vegas sees them stranded by the side of the road and screeches to a halt. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan climbs out to survey the dire situation. Other famous passengers include Michael R. Bloomberg, mayor of New York, and Joel I. Klein, his one-time school chancellor. (Klein got worn out after trying for eight years to fix the city schools. Now he’s back in the cozy corporate world, earning millions, giving Rupert Murdoch legal and education-related advice.) Michelle Rhee is a passenger, too, and there are all kinds of politicians and lobbyists and sales persons for big testing companies filling the seats. Sadly, none of them knows a pile of shit from a spark plug when it comes to car repairs.


What could possibly go wrong
when Rupert Murdoch, left, and Joel I. Klein, right,
go to work to fix America's public schools?

Duncan is first to suggest a solution to the problem of the three stalled-out cars. “We are going to paint the Impala red to make it run.”

“We will call this plan ‘Race to the Garage.’ We will offer states $4.35 billion in federal aid if they agree to paint all their cars red.” A call is made, and at great expense, apparatus is brought out to the desert, and the car is painted red. It still won’t run.

Arne scratches his head.

Arne will point the way.
And, no, Duncan never actually taught.

Michelle Rhee pipes up next. Even the other reformers roll their eyes. After hours spent together on the bus they realize this lady’s favorite topic is herself and her second favorite is Michelle Rhee.

“I say we make these drivers apply for new licenses.” she sneers. “If you had better drivers the cars would surely run. I once taught for three years. So I know everything there could possibly be to know about saving children. These drivers must be terrible. Every child deserves an excellent driver. I am thinking... someone pretty much like me.” 

“Yeah,” Mr. Galt agrees. He was behind the wheel of the Civic until it died and he has thirty-three years of experience in the classroom. “Paved roads don’t matter…or guard rails…or laws against drunk driving…or bridges.”

Rhee misses the veteran’s sarcasm. Galt continues: “Or turn signals…or windshields. Hell...not even wheels.”

Suddenly, Rhee suspects she’s being mocked and shoots Galt a look.

Rhee now cashes in on her three years as a classroom teacher.
Trust us:  She doesn't offer free advice.

No matter, because Mayor Bloomberg is quick to agree with Rhee. “The problem in U. S. education is that we hire drivers from the bottom 20% of their graduating college classes—and not of the best schools.”

 The Harvard-educated billionaire informs everyone that the driver of the Honda will have to go. Another call goes out and a graduate of Teach for America is brought to the desert. The young professional gets behind the wheel and tries twice to start the engine. When it won’t turn over, the Teach for American kid exclaims, “Well, I only signed up for two tries. My work is done, my resume is padded.” The car she arrived in is still idling by the side of the Interstate and she jumps back in, saying to the driver, “Take me to the nearest law school, and step on it. I never planned to make a career in education anyway.”

Joel I. Klein, who never taught a single solitary minute in his life, offers up another plan. Of course he does. “I have a plan! And my plan is sure to fix the problem. We grade the cars. Then parents can choose the best cars for their children and all mechanical problems will go away. He gives the Impala an ‘F’ and the Honda gets a ‘D+.’ The Lexus gets a ‘B’ because it went a hundred yards farther down the highway before its engine coughed and died. Klein slaps bumper stickers with grades on all three cars.

They still don’t run. 

A Tea Party governor speaks up. It’s John Kasich. (Kasich knows all about schools because he used to be an investment banker.) “We are going to require drivers in failing cars to take tests,” he explains to his reforming buddies, “and prove they know their subject matter. We are also going to give that third grader in the back of the Impala a reading test. If they fail—we will fire the driver and hold the kid back. In Ohio this will be known as the ‘Third Grade Reading Guarantee.’ I will be the hero who saved the Ohio schools and maybe get some fat campaign contributions from lobbyists!”

The three drivers mutter darkly and the third grader stares at the governor in disbelief. Kasich hands the driver of the Impala and the kid the requisite tests and tells them to sit in the shade, if they can find any, maybe behind the stalled-out vehicles.

Kasich decides it’s too warm outside for him and jumps back on the air-conditioned bus. It’s hot and heading for 100° as the sun climbs high in the noon sky. The teacher and the student wipe their sweating brows and finish up their tests.

Sadly, when they’re done, the cars still don’t run.

Charles and David Koch are next to have a say. They’re not school reformers at all; but they love to lobby politicians. They want states to pay for vouchers, allowing more kids to go to private schools, and want corporations to take over whatever public schools manage to stay alive. The brothers hand out five-figure checks to lawmakers and governors seated on the bus. Naturally, Kasich and Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin get their share. The brothers can afford to spread around a little extra cash. Each has a personal fortune of $31 billion and now—money dispensed—they expect some action.

Walker agrees to take union protection away from all the drivers in his state. Calls are made to lawmakers back home and the necessary law (already written by a shadowy “non-partisan group” called the American Legislative Exchange Council, which the Koch brothers just so happen to fund) is enacted quickly. The drivers are ordered to get back behind the wheel and crank the engines or they’ll be terminated.

Regardless, none of the cars comes close to starting. 

The Koch brothers don’t really care about education, generally, or the children stranded in the desert, specifically. They hate unions—because unions usually back Democrats for political office—and what the Koch brothers really care about is political power. And taxes. Those boys loathe paying taxes on their personal fortunes.

Taxes make them mad.

Their wealth has actually increased since 2011.
They can afford to buy a few politicians.

A representative of Pearson Education offers up yet another plan. “What we need are more standardized tests, which my company will be happy to provide for a small fee, just a few million dollars, every year, from every state. We test students in all subjects and grades and maybe charge for scoliosis testing.” She opens a large briefcase filled with tests and all fifteen kids are ordered to get to work again. They complete this new set of tests and turn them in and the Pearson representative hails the next passing auto and climbs inside. She’s taking the tests to the nearest testing center for grading. “I’ll send you the bill,” she calls out cheerfully to Mr. Duncan. Then she’s gone.

Tired of all the delays—not to mention the failures—the various reformers fall to arguing. One insists that if they added new technology to the Impala it would run. Technology, he insists, will save us. A second says the problem with the cars comes down to owners’ manuals. What is needed is a Common Core Standards Owners’ Manual, the same for every car in our great land. A third expert says, no, we need charter garages. If we park a car that doesn’t run in a charter garage it’s sure to start right up—or something.

It’s now a donnybrook and bold plans are flying in all directions.

Suddenly, Rhee exclaims: “I’m late for a speech I’m supposed to give about the future of American education, during which I will hint that I am the savior everyone must follow. I can’t miss out on this. I’m being paid a $50,000 fee.” She jumps back on the bus.  

“I’m a brilliant billionaire,” Bloomberg reminds the others. “Surely no one can expect a man as important as me to stand here in the desert and cook my mega-brain.” He climbs aboard the bus. All the politicians and lobbyists and testing company execs follow and off they go.  

“Good luck, kids,” a former Texas governor named George W. Bush shouts from an open rear window. “No Child Left Behind!”


Bloomberg might try teaching;
we know he's more than smart enough.

THE THREE TEACHERS AND THEIR FIFTEEN STUDENTS watch as the bus disappears into a glorious red and orange and yellow Arizona sunset. They’re on their own again. Ms. Beasley, the driver of the Lexus, turns to face the others. “The key to moving forward in any car or any school,” she says, “comes down to just one word.

“That is: ‘motive.’”

“Like ‘motivation?’” asks Wanda, one of Beasley’s better students. 

“Yes,” Ms. Beasley agrees. “If we expect to get out of this desert it doesn’t make an ounce of difference what color the cars might be or what kind of garage we’re going to park in once we arrive. We’re going to have to put our backs into it and shove.”  

Rick, a high school senior who had been riding in the Civic, immediately grasps her point. “The key part of ‘automotive,’ is not ‘auto,’ but ‘motive.’ The car can’t move without some source of motive power.”  

“Looks like we’re going to have to do some sweating if we expect to move these cars along,” says Shaquille, who was riding in the Impala. “If we expect to get anywhere in education we, as students, are going to have to push.”

“Teachers must push, too,” Ms. Beasley notes. 

They all look off down the highway. Only twelve miles to go to Tucson and it isn’t going to be getting any easier. Still, even Carlos, a first grader, has the proper attitude. “Well, I guess we better start,” he says and prepares to put his fifty pounds of muscle to work. 

He thinks a moment, though, and adds:  “It would have been nice if all those people on that bus had stuck around to help.”

The three drivers give each other knowing looks. Then all the teachers and all the students lean in together and do their part.


FELLOW TEACHERS:  IF YOU AGREE THIS ANALOGY IS ACCURATE PLEASE SPREAD IT TO COLLEAGUES AND FRIENDS.

TIME TO STAND UP TO THE INEPT REFORMERS WHO ARE SO BUSY RUINING AMERICAN EDUCATION TODAY.

P. S. Answer to the title question: NONE.


ADDENDUM:  Several of my administrator friends have read this post; to be fair, I should include a principal who comes looking for the missing teachers and students and gives one of the cars a tow.

In the real world, we should also keep in mind that not ALL teachers and not ALL students are really anxious to push. Again, motivation becomes the key.

The key in education is always motive power.
School reformers don't get it. They think the key is some new plan.


******

If you liked this post, you might like my book about teaching, Two Legs Suffice, now available on Amazon.

Or contact me at vilejjv@yahoo.com and I can probably send you a copy direct, a little more cheaply. My book is meant to be a defense of all good teachers and a clear explanation of what good teachers can do, and what they cannot do.

Two Legs Suffice is also about what students, parents and others involved in education must do if we want to truly enhance learning.