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. 

Donald Trump, Next U. S. Secretary of Education?

TODAY, I AM GOING TO EXPLAIN how Big Business and billionaires can end the "education crisis" facing America.

Unfortunately, most people who see that phrase, "end the 'education crisis' facing America," will lose interest before finishing the sentence and switch to YouTube to hunt up clips of Jolene Van Vugt setting the land speed record on a motorized toilet.

While you're checking out Vugt's stunning accomplishment you might also watch Secretary of Education Arne Duncan drone on about the achievement gap in U. S. education. But you're not actually crazy. Duncan has a measly 184 views. No. Do what most  people do. Check out the video of Charlie Schmidt's piano-playing cat, which has 24,189,976.

Of course, if you're interested in what's happening in the public schools, there's one place you can still go for "fair and balanced" coverage. That's right, you can watch Fox News. And if you do your head is already brimful of ideas:

1. You know teachers' unions are shot through with greed and corruption and that their reason for existence is to protect tenured child molesters.

2. You are convinced that unions make campaign donations to politicians who worship the Devil.

3. You realize that if Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin loses his recall election, June 5, then union thugs are coming to your home next and they are going to eat your baby.

4. On a positive note, you can see that the only way we can save our schools, our children, our piano-playing cats, and our inalienable right to ride motorized toilets, is to break teachers' unions and turn the public schools over to for-profit corporations.

5. You believe government isn't a solution. Government is a problem. In fact, government is like herpes.

6. And last, but not least, billionaires are your heroes, because you admire their altruism; and you understand that business efficiencies brought into U. S. public education can only mean lower taxes and soaring profits.

6a. No, wait, we meant:  soaring test scores.

6b. In fact, you hope that when Mitt Romney sits in the Oval Office he will select Donald Trump as his U. S. Secretary of Education!

Of course, since you probably don't follow education news closely, you might not know that Rupert Murdoch, the Australian billionaire and owner and guiding spirit of Fox News, paid $360 million in November, 2010 to buy a company called Wireless Generation and get in on the education technology business. And you've probably never given much thought to what might happen when people like Trump and Murdoch see dollar signs dancing in front of them....no, no...we mean happy American children.

So let's look at a few examples to see how the Golden Age of For-Profit Public Education might play out:

SCHOOL BUS SERVICE:  Low-budget bus companies take over and slash costs (hugh savings for taxpayers! huge profits for low-budget bus companies!) by dispensing with time-consuming safety inspections, ignoring rules limiting hours employees can drive, and skipping background checks for drivers. Okay, kids! Meet Ophadell Williams, your new driver! Sure, Ophadell was once jailed for manslaughter. Sure, his driving privileges have been suspended on multiple occasions. Mr. Williams works cheap and this is business. So fasten your seat belts, because your bus is going to be careening off the road when Ophadell falls asleep at the wheel!

GYM CLASS REQUIREMENT:  Parents might worry that their children are getting flabby. But the for-profit gym teacher has a solution. He asks mom and dad to watch a short educational film about the benefits to their child of wearing Skecher toning sneakers. The film features Dr. Steven Gauteau, chiropractor, touting a six-week clinical trial he conducted, which showed that if a child would wear these toning sneakers he or she would lose weight, see an increase in muscle strength, and have slimmer legs and better buttocks! But the doctor will not bother to mention that his wife is an executive who works for...Skechers. No problem. The shoe companies will rake in the dough, earning $1.1 billion in 2010 sales of toning sneakers, and the $40 million Skechers will pay in fines later, for making unsubstantiated health-benefit claims, will be a small cost to pay for doing business. And your son or daughter will still have those cool sneakers!

GOOD SCHOOL NUTRITION: Meddling bureaucrats with the Department of Agriculture will try to impose new rules and require more fresh fruits and vegetables on the school lunch menu. But student interests come first when Big Business controls education. Del Monte Foods will save all those chubby fourth graders, putting lobbyists to work in Washington, D. C., to ensure that pizza remains classed as a vegetable. (After all, a slice of pizza is covered in tomato sauce!) Tea Party types will be shown on Fox News, passing out bumper stickers that read, "You'll have to pry my cold dead hands off my pepperoni pizza."

FOR-PROFIT SCHOOLS: We have seen the future of for-profit education! At the college level, it's ITT Tech and Phoenix University! These for-profit colleges make money hand over fist, which we all know is the founding principle of U. S. public education. Since 2008, such institutions have actively recruited students, including returning Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, who have guaranteed G. I. Bill tuition benefits, even though many of the students they recruit are totally unprepared for college-level study. No problem for Big Business saviors:  Students at for-profit colleges have used G. I. Bill benefits and relied on more than $125 billion in federal grants and loans to pay almost all their tuition expenses (because government is always a problem) and many have flunked out or graduated with worthless degrees (because business is always a solution). Wait? What? And then those students have defaulted on 15% of all loans.

START YOUR OWN CHARTER SCHOOL:  Profits are waiting at the elementary and secondary levels, as well. Just found a charter school! Collect payments from state government. Then cook the books and pad your own bank account. It's the Carl W. Shye Jr. method! Shye, treasurer for four Ohio charter schools, has been charged with embezzling $523,000 from school operations! Or go bankrupt, as did Lorain Art Academy, another Ohio charter. Yep. Make the state take back it's students, but say you no longer have the money already paid to your institution to educate those students. Feel the power of Big Business to save U. S. education! Operate with the same dedication to children as Michigan-based National Heritage Academies. Lease an old Catholic school in Brooklyn for $264,000 yearly. Then charge a New York State-supported charter school $2.76 million to use the same building.

STANDARDIZED TESTING: The states pay testing companies hundreds of billions to design, market and grade standardized tests. Classroom teachers will tell you the tests aren't working. But if that were true Big Business couldn't keep selling more testing, and, you know, helping America's children. So, all you billionaires, rely on your allies in right-wing political circles, and your proxies at Fox News, to keep portraying teachers as lazy union members! Sure, the test-preparation company, Princeton Review, now faces a federal suit, accused of submitting millions of dollars in false claims, for providing tutoring services to underprivileged school children in New York City! Sure, sure, one former supervisor is accused of forging student signatures, falsifying sign-in sheets and providing false certifications, including one billing which showed that 74 students attended a class held on New Year's Day in 2008, when...well...no class was actually held. That's  okay. Free markets always work the way God intended.

FINALLY, SCHOOL NURSING: Children with severe emotional problems are way more expensive to educate. Yet they insist on coming to school! Time to apply good business principles and sedate them. Presto! No more behavior issues! And tidy profits for drug companies! So what if hundreds of thousands of young children, two-thirds of them twelve or younger, are treated with Risperdel. Who cares if 1,200 kids suffered serious health problems after using the drug? If thirty-one died, including a 9-year-old who suffered a stroke a few days after beginning treatment? You're bringing business efficiency to the school house!

Meanwhile, doctors are increasingly prescribing Zyprexa, Seroquel, Abilify and Geodon to treat children. But government agencies are whining. (As always, government is the problem!) Studies show that use of these drugs has increased fivefold in twenty years. Well, that's great! Drug companies help kids and simultaneously make billions in profits! In fact, according to an article in the New York Times, “The growing use of the medicines has been driven partly by the sudden popularity of pediatric bipolar disorder.”

Well, okay. Thank god for the work of Dr. Joseph Biederman, a child psychiatrist at Harvard, and leading advocate of that diagnosis. If you can’t trust an expert like Biederman to tell you when your child needs powerful medication, who can you trust? What? You say an investigation by Congress reveals that the doctor failed to report to Harvard that he earned $1.4 million in outside income from... the drug manufacturers?

You say Biederman and the drug companies were not entirely forth-coming in testimony before Congress? That as early as 2002, one internal report noted that more study of medicines prescribed for children was necessary?  That without more data, government watchdogs might rightly question the use of these powerful medications, “especially those like neuroleptics, which expose children to potentially serious adverse events?”

You say “adverse events” is Big Business-speak for “death?”

Don't worry. When it comes to America's public schools, Mr. Murdoch and all the other billionaires just want to help.

P. S.: I CAN ALWAYS ADD EXAMPLES to show how business efficiencies, business morals, and business motivations can save us.

HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS: Your favorite high school realizes good athletic teams mean good publicity. The football coach starts recruiting, paying players from other schools under the table. The star linebacker gets hurt and his status for the big game is doubtful. Follow the National Hockey League, where Derek Boogard, who played for several teams, received more than 100 perscriptions for pain-killers from team doctors, even though he had a history of addiction. (Boogard died of an accidental overdose at age 28.)

GAMBLING DOLLARS GO TO SCHOOLS: We all know altruistic casino owners like to pay taxes to support schools. It's called doing your civic duty! So, let's say you want to move into a new state, say New York, and say you want the governor's support for a constitutional amendment to to legalize casino gambling because you love helping the children, and let's say you donate $2 million to the governor's campaign organization. You won't care about that money because you'll be raking in huge profits...no, I mean, you'll be helping raise test scores.

"School Crisis?" Maybe it's an "Office Tower Crisis?"

THE NEWS HAS BEEN FULL OF STORIES lately about the “school crisis” in America, about how the terrible public schools are undermining the U. S. economy. And I admit I’m scared. The American Dream is being poisoned, strangled and drowned—and it’s all the work of those evil teachers and their evil unions.

Or so the narrative goes.

Look at the international rankings if you require proof. Students from Finland stand #1 in reading and math. Worse still, America is getting its academic brains beat out by Iceland and Denmark and...my god...Liechtenstein.

So what do we know?  Clearly, we have a “school crisis.” You have to be blind, deaf, dumb, and probably lame, with receding hair, and fifty pounds overweight, not to realize that only business methods introduced in American education can stop the hemorrhaging of jobs to Indonesia and China and Bangladesh...and ...uh...What the hell?

We aren’t losing jobs to Liechtenstein.

Maybe we don’t have a “school crisis;” maybe what we really have is an “office tower crisis.”

Maybe our problem is greedy corporations and not teachers’ unions at all.

But I digress.

Are we really losing jobs to Indonesia because
the schools there are better?

THINK ABOUT THE VERY PHRASE:  “school crisis.” It’s like saying the building is the problem.

In the same vein, then, could we say a terrible sports team has an “arena crisis?” Imagine that you could take two NBA teams, the Charlotte Bobcats (with a 7-41 record) and the Chicago Bulls (41-11) and tell them to switch places where they play.

Would that change of address turn the Bobcats into Bulls?

That’s the same level of shallow thinking we see when critics insist we have a “school crisis” and promise that we will see miraculous results if we remove students from “failing” public schools and send them off to charter institutions.

Especially, business-run charter institutions. 

When U. S. shoe manufacturers lost out to competition
with the Chinese, was that a result of some "school crisis?"
Or was it workers willing to work for a few dollars per day?

It’s surprising, really, that charter schools in general, haven’t been faring better, because they start with real advantages that have nothing to do with superior business methods or acumen.

You open up a charter school and you set certain parameters, which regular public schools cannot. You say, for example, we will take students by lottery, because we only have so many seats. If a hundred kids apply from the regular schools you know right away that those hundred have parents who pay attention and go to the trouble to apply.

You still haven’t addressed the most insoluble problems of our society. The insoluble problem is child #101, who hasn’t seen his father in five years, whose mother is a meth head. Mom isn’t going to apply for anything school-related, because mom isn’t worth a shit. So her child suffers every single night and every single day. That means child #101 remains behind in the regular public school and we continue to hear about the “school crisis” when what we’re dealing with is actually a “house crisis,” to use an equally inapt term.

I READ RECENTLY ABOUT A NEW YORK CHARTER SCHOOL which held a “getting-to-know you” session for parents and children to begin the school year. Attendance was mandatory and rules were clearly explained. If a student caused serious discipline problems, both student and parent would be required to attend Saturday morning sessions to address the matter. At that point, several parents took their children and left the building.

A similar story out of Chicago notes that Noble Schools, a for-profit charter operation, assign students demerits for all rules infractions. Twelve demerits means a child has to go to a special Saturday class to address behavior issues and pay $120 for materials.

If that doesn’t solve the problem and another round of special classes is needed that’s another $120.

What happens to those New York kids whose parents won’t back up the charter school on discipline, or those Chicago kids whose parents can’t pay, or won’t, or when the child, himself, refuses to reform?

At that point, such children trudge back down the street to the regular public schools, and re-enroll. Their problems are still the same.

Critics call this a “school crisis.”

THE CRITICS ARE FOOLS.

Stupid, Stupid Ohio Teachers and Struggling Schools

Look!  I actually own a few books.

 
WELL, WHO KNEW? I certainly didn't. But then again, that's no surprise. I'm just a retired teacher and a stupid one to boot.

Yep, that's right. Ohio lawmakers have zeroed in on the one big problem they must address when it comes to education--and that problem is stupid teachers.

I'm so dense, so dumb, so clueless, I never knew during my 33 years in a classroom that my colleagues and I were the problem. And if you don't know today, well, you know what that means. Yeah. Sad but true.

You're probably stupid, too.

If you're an Ohio teacher and you can read, which our lawmakers apparently doubt, perhaps you saw the recent article in the Cincinnati Enquirer. Starting September 1, Ohio bureaucrats will rank all schools according to standardized test scores. Teachers in the lowest performing schools, the bottom 10%, will be required to take tests to prove they're not morons. Or as Governor John Kasich (a staunch friend of public education, who sends his own children to private schools), explains it:  “Struggling schools need to be sure teachers are competent and fully capable of teaching their assigned curriculum.”

I know I'm feeling pretty much as dumb as a turnip right now; but maybe we need to start by asking Governor Kasich a few questions. What, for example, does a struggling school struggle against? Is the building being choked by teachers? Is it locked in a brick-and-mortar wrestling match of some kind?

Is a school struggling--and are test scores low--because teachers don't know how to teach? Or do many students have severe problems with absenteeism? Are some Ohio kids growing up homeless or nearly so? Are we seeing teens in the upper grades who are regular drug users?

Does this mean the school is struggling?

Call me obtuse, but was the school struggling, up in Chardon, a few days ago, when one misguided teen shot and killed three peers? Or was society or the family struggling and were the "stupid" teachers left to try to pick up the bloody pieces?

Certainly, we can have a healthy debate about the impact poverty has on children in schools. Let's be honest, though. Almost every "struggling school" is going to turn out to be in a poorer neighborhood and that's true across the nation too.

I was very fortunate to teach in an affluent suburban district. So a law like this would not have touched me. That doesn't mean this law isn't an insult to every member of the profession. I may be dumb, I suppose, but never once did I say to myself, while I was working, "Wow, those teachers in those poor inner-city schools? They must be dimwits. That has to be the main reason student test scores are low."

I've been working on a book about education for three years and I find some tendencies impossible to ignore.

Not long ago, I came across a study of high school graduation rates (based on 2005 data), showing huge discrepancies between inner-city schools and surrounding suburbs. Only 38% of Cleveland Public School students graduated in four years. Yet, suburban districts around Cleveland averaged 80%. Baltimore was second worst in the nation with a 41% four-year graduation rate. Surrounding suburbs graduated 81%. The difference between Columbus, Ohio city schools and Columbus, Ohio suburban schools was 38 percentage points. For Milwaukee it was 35 points, Nashville 33. For New York City the spread was 29. For Chicago the difference was 28.

So:  Let me try to explain in simple terms (because I must be a simpleton) that teachers are not the only factor, and not even the primary factor, impacting standardized testing scores. Let me explain this all to our brilliant governor and all the geniuses in the Ohio General Assembly. I will call it the "Bean Soup Tautology."

Let's say we want to figure out what's wrong with Ohio or even U. S. public schools. Suppose Ohio University graduates 200 teacher candidates in 2012. Akron University does the same. Ohio State sends out 300. Miami University adds 150. The University of Cincinnati rounds it out, so that we have 1,000 job candidates. We mix up all the young men and women who want to teach, like beans in a pot. We cook them up and serve them out to districts across the Buckeye State. In some fashion the soup we serve the poor districts tastes terrible and the students who eat it get food poisoning and almost die.

STRANGER STILL, THE SOUP SERVED out of the same pot to surrounding, affluent suburban districts tastes fine and students who eat it feel great, go on to college, get good jobs, and settle down in affluent neighborhoods themselves.

How is this possible? Oh great, good, and glorious Governor Kasich, can you explain? Is there some cosmic force at work, some power I don't have the mental capacity to grasp? Are smart teachers magnetized, so that they are drawn to some districts and repelled by others?

I know Ohio doesn't have any Indian reservations, but I've been reading in the New York Times about widespread problems with alcoholism, crime and unemployment on reservations out West. And what do you know!

Native-Americans have the highest dropout rates of any ethnic group in America.

If the problems in schools, in Ohio, or anywhere else for that matter, comes down to a few stupid teachers, what are the mathematical probabilities that all the stupidest educators ended up on Indian reservations?

You don't see differences just between one district in Ohio and another. You see differences between states. If problems boil down to teachers, and their lack of mental capacities, how explain that smart teachers migrate to states like Vermont where the public high school graduation rate was 86.6% (students finishing in four years) and Minnesota (85.6%) and dumb educators head south to places like South Carolina (53.9%) and Nevada (47.6%)?

Beating up on public school teachers today seems to be education reformers' sport; but if we ever want to make significant improvements in U. S. education we need to avoid this sort of one-legged analysis. We need to stop pointing every finger at the people at the front of the classrooms. We need to remember something chimpanzee expert Roger Fouts once said: “Good science is parsimonious—it seeks the simplest explanation.”

So what is the simplest explanation? Magnetized teachers? Not likely. The simplest explanation is that most problems in education are still poverty related, in the inner-cities, on reservations, and stratified in rich suburban districts.

THIS DOESN'T MEAN A CHILD IS DOOMED if he or she is born poor. It does mean the child's problems are not all related to teachers.

Even a stupid, retired teacher like me can grasp this simple concept. Family dysfunction often causes families to fall into poverty. So the problem is not poverty, as such, but the dysfunction that caused the family to fall to that condition. Dysfunctional families tend to end up in poorer neighborhoods in larger concentrations, because--well--Governor Kasich--because they're poor.

If mom and dad are both alcoholics, you, the child, are much more likely to be born with fetal alcohol syndrome, as 1 in 4 children on some reservations are. You are far more likely to struggle in school and end up in poverty, too. If dad abandoned the family and won’t pay child support and mom uses drugs, you, the child, are much more likely to end up in poverty, living in a poor neighborhood, with no one at home you can count on to help every afternoon after school. If you, the impressionable teen, live in a gang-ridden inner-city area where streets are unsafe, you will have a far harder time focusing on studies, not to mention a harder time staying out of harm's bloody way. That's why cities have higher murder rates than suburbs. It's not because of stupid cops. Poverty, in and of itself is never disabling. That doesn't mean that problems related to poverty don't make a child's life much harder and complicate everything teachers try to do. Even life expectancy is significantly reduced for people who are poor.

Are they going to stupid doctors, too?

When you start with the premise that schools are struggling because teachers are stupid, every teacher in Ohio ought to be insulted.


SEE ALSO: I Hate Teach for America

Shooting at Chardon High School

HAVE YOU HEARD THIS MORNING that Daniel Parmertor, 16, a junior at Chardon High here in Ohio was killed at school?  Have you heard that Russell King Jr.,17, badly wounded, has now succumbed? Do you know that the shooter is also 17?

No, make it worse. A third teen, Demetrius Hewlin, has now died. Two more are wounded but likely to live. And what do our leaders in education have to offer to deal with this sort of tragedy? We're going to focus on standardized tests!

It makes me sick.

From U. S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, in 2012, stretching back to William Bennett, who held the office in 1985, none of the loudest voices in U. S. education ever address fundamental problems. The kid who did the shooting, really, who wants him in their school? What plan do we have for helping that kid? Is that plan to avert our gaze, send all the good kids to charter schools, and pretend the shooter went away?  Secretary Duncan blathers on about the need to bring better people into the teaching profession. Mean-while, back in Chicago, where he supposedly fixed city schools, you have 300 school-age kids shot in gang-related violence in a typical year.

In the United States today an estimated 400,000 juveniles are gang members. And what does Congress do?  Pass a law called No Child Left Behind, promise by 2014, that every child will be proficient in reading and math. Does that include gang members?

We have politicians and education "leaders" who sit on the sidelines and tell teachers what they should do; and they don't acknowledge one tenth of the difficulties and don't save a single child themselves. All they really do is preach.

It was a real teacher, Frank Hall, acting quickly, who dragged one wounded teen into a classroom, out of the line of fire, this week.

Public schools aren't just tasked with saving the sweet little kindergartner, the fresh-faced fifth grader from a good home and the diligent high school senior who dreams of going to Ohio State. The public schools don't just try to save Parmertor, who had hoped to become a computer repairman. They don't just teach victims, like King and Hewlin, who were minding their business in the cafeteria yesterday morning when gunfire erupted. They're  tasked with saving the shooter, too, and the gang member, and every kid with severe problems in the home.

Even if you took the guns away, we still have 1.6 million homeless children in America. So, what do our governors say? Here in Ohio, John Kasich is in favor of merit pay for educators. That ass. Maybe teachers need combat pay. In Wisconsin, Scott Walker wants to deny teachers bargaining rights. In New Jersey, Chris Christie makes teachers' unions the villains of his play.

Meanwhile, critics ignore the fact that 72% of African-American kids, 59% of Hispanic kids and 37% of white children are born out of wedlock today.

LET'S PRETEND we haven't seen recent surveys, showing that one in five public school kids has been offered, has sold, or has been given illegal drugs at school. Is that the fault of the schools? Do all problems come down to bad teachers? Can we solve our troubles with vouchers so that frightened parents can take kids away to safer private schools? The shooters, the drug dealers, the gang members? They don't go away. What plan to fix education addresses these issues?

Meanwhile, innocent kids in Ohio are gunned down. We have no plans to fix that. Kids in New Jersey are homeless. We have no plans to fix that. Kids in Wisconsin grow up without the influence of fathers. We have no plans to fix that. The experts promise to fix schools. What plan is there to fix humanity, first, to fix society, to help students with serious mental health issues, to provide homes for the homeless, to lure gang members from the path of violence?

I know what it's like to have a gun in the classroom. Twenty-five years ago a young man brought a gun to school to shoot me and to shoot one of his wrestling teammates. His teammate had been taunting him about his weight and I had caught him drawing an obscene picture during study hall and told him he had to show it to his father. Luckily, he didn't shoot me and he didn't shoot his teammate, either. But ten years later he shot himself. My god, what a tragedy.

We have to stop listening to false promises, falling for absurd schemes, and start looking for realistic ways to help the kids that most need help.


MARCH 1: NEW EVIDENCE AND NEW TRAGEDY in Chicago today, two students were stabbed at Oliver Goldsmith School. One dead, the other injured, a third in custody. This time the school is run by a private contractor, AMIKids, Inc. and the campus for the school served twenty students with behavioral and emotional needs.

Do you know that in this country we already have 17,000 school resource officers roaming the halls? That's "cops," to you. And that's not enough?

My god, my god, what is our plan?

Home School for Homeless Kids: The Genius of Rick Santorum

Wouldn't it be great if all families
home schooled their own kids?
It depends in part on the family.

If you haven't noticed, the debate about the "school crisis" in America keeps gets dumber and dumber. And just when you think it can't get any dumber some politician or "expert" steps up to the plate and we sink to some new nadir.

Speaking recently on the correct role of government in schools, GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum made clear he sees no role for the federal government in U. S. education.

Mr. Santorum might have been on decent footing had he stopped there, but comments that followed were the last link in a chain that critics of public schools never follow to an end. For years we've been told, usually by conservatives, that if we give all parents vouchers, and let all parents send their children to  schools of their choice, and to do it with tax dollars, our problems in education will go away.

People didn't buy that idea. So the push for charter schools began, instead. Now we were told that if a kid had a problem in school, the solution was obvious. Just pack the child off to a different building.

Mr. Santorum now has an even better idea. He takes the school reform movement one building farther.

The federal government is out. So, too, are the states. Taxes are reduced and government gets a long-overdue shrinking. Parents take on the role of educating children. The "school crisis" is solved by eliminating the root of all evil.

We get rid of the school buildings.

If you don't know:  Mr.Santorum and his wife prefer the home-school option, themselves. They're well-to-do and Mrs. Santorum can afford to stay home and focus on educating their seven children. The parents are good, stable individuals (as far as I can tell). So it's working for them.

The problem critics like Mr. Santorum never see, either because they're naive or because it doesn't fit their agenda to see it, is that not every family is the same or even sane. First of all, many poor and lower middle class families are in no position to have mom or dad stay home to home-school the kids. Single parents are out of luck, too. And there's an even bigger hole in Senator Santorum's logic and a gaping hole in all the arguments that fault public schools for all our problems. It would be wonderful if every parent gave a damn about their children, in school, or out, like the Santorums. But the public schools have to educate every child. So they  take children from good, stable families, and children from the families where mom and dad are useless, at best, dangerous at worst.

Consider an old example, but one of my "favorites," from the Lebanon Daily News, a small Pennsylvania paper I picked up once on vacation. Reporters noted that in May 2008, a neighbor called police after spotting Elizabeth Ann Fox’s two young sons, 4 and 2, crawling out a bedroom window. A state trooper arrived to find the “kitchen floor covered with garbage and half-eaten food. The stench of rotting food and human waste forced him back outside.”

A second trooper located mom soon after, “sitting in her car and eating a sandwich at a fast food restaurant in neighboring Union Township. State police said the children had been left alone for at least two hours.” Picture mom if you will, happily stuffing her face with a Big Mac and fries, while her children remain at home amid piles of garbage. 

Then ask yourself:  Does anyone think the problems these children will have in years to come are going to be about schools?

That's the blind spot in all the bold plans being floated to fix American education. What plan out there addresses the needs of the kids who most need help, when their problems aren't in the classroom, but in the bedroom at home?

If you'd like a current example, consider a story in today's New York Times. It's about a family in Dayton, Texas. Agents of the child welfare agency raided the home one recent afternoon. Inside, they found 11 children, several tied to their beds. An 11-year-old had a black eye, finger marks on his forearms, and one front tooth had been knocked out. Eight kids were confined to a single 10 x 10 bedroom, in the dark, the window boarded over with plywood, when investigators entered the home. Two infants were removed immediately for signs of "failure to thrive" and pneumonia. None of the older children were enrolled in school; and, needless to say, these weren't the kind of parents who were going to have much aptitude for home-schooling their own kids.

That's the problem with plans to fix education with vouchers and charter schools and now Mr. Santorum's call for parents to home-school their kids. The public schools take all kids from all kinds of homes. We even take kids whose families may be good, but who have no homes, who can barely put bread on a table, if they can locate a table to put bread upon.

Senator Santorum's backward thinking on education is enough to make Charles Dickens cringe. Call his new plan: “Home School for Homeless Kids.”

If Only Vouchers Worked Like Magic Cloaks

My wife's father died when she was eight;
but she was raised by a great mother.
So she turned out great.
It works like that a lot in life
and it can work the other way.

My blog has been picking up a little traffic lately.  I figure it probably has something to do with my fluid writing style, or perhaps it boils down to my good looks.

It can't be because of brains. To hear critics speak, America's public school teachers are a bunch of Neanderthals and every problem in our education system today is a direct result of their all-encompassing stupidity.

So, to recap: I'm a retired teacher and my blog is designed, in part, to speak in defense of all good teachers.

For that reason, I try to make clear that teachers are not the only problem in our schools, nor, in my opinion, the biggest problem by far.

I'm not like U. S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

I don't believe, like he does, that we can test ourselves to education success. Nor do I believe in vouchers and charter schools, as keys to our salvation. In my opinion there are plenty of bad parents out there and they are the very ones most likely to send children to school who have severe problems and who are, of course, least likely to have support or love or decent living conditions in the home.

If you're a fan of vouchers, however, I have a perfect voucher plan--which is probably going to make me the next U. S. Secretary of Education if Mitt or Newt or Rick or Ron or Michelle or The Donald or the Herminator or "None of the Above" can oust President Obama from his comfy seat in the Oval Office in November.

My wife was great with
raising kids.
Sadly, not all parents are alike.

Yesterday, a "fan" of my blog complained because I was using "scare tactics," citing examples of terrible parents, and chastized me for arguing that vouchers will never solve the problems of children in the very greatest need of help.

I don't believe I'm resorting to "scare tactics" when I try to point out the obvious. Take, for instance, the recent tragedy in Washington state. There, Josh Powell, already a suspect in the disappearance and likely murder of his wife, set fire to his home, killing himself and two young sons, Charlie, 7, and Braden, 5.

Maybe I am another stupid teacher. Maybe I've been getting along all these years on nothing but my looks. But had those two poor boys survived, I don't see how a voucher or a seat in a charter school was ever going to make their father a decent parent or even a decent human being. 

You can bury your head in the scholastic sand if you want to and try to make the case that more and more charter schools will fix U. S. education. But that is tatamount to saying if we built Mr. Powell a better home he'd be a better father.

I want to hear the experts outline a plan that helps kids like Charlie and Braden--who are never going to get the help at home. Just because you took your voucher and took your child away to a different school, that doesn't mean you did a damn thing to save the Powell brothers.

It's sad, really (and again, I admit, there are bad teachers out there and we need to do more to get them out of the schools). But when I "Googled" "father sets fire," intending to add "to sons," to find the story about the Powell's, I got multiple stories before I could finish. One was an old report, from 1986, about a boy named David Rothenberg, whose father dumped three gallons of kerosene in a motel room while his 6-year-old was sleeping, and set it on fire, burning the child over 90% of his body. A more recent example, from West Palm Beach, Florida, would be Jorge Barahona, found with the body of his adopted daughter, Nubia, in the back of his pickup truck and a badly battered son, Victor, 10, her twin brother, slumped across the front seat. Dad told police he was distraught over the girl's death and planned to set fire to himself and his son, but couldn't do it in the end. Remorse came much too late for the poor girl or for Victor's sake. The boy showed evidence of all kinds of prior injuries: broken collarbone, broken arm, burn scars on buttocks and abdomen, and rope marks on wrists.

Emily Rodriguez, Victor's first grade teacher, told reporters she remembers how Nubia used to visit her class at the end of every day to see how her brother had been doing.

Now:  Think about this whole story for a moment. Think like any good teacher. Is the solution to such problems really more layers of standardized tests? A school voucher for Nubia? What good would that do in the end? Stupid teachers? Really?  That's our biggest worry?

Worst of all, it doesn't take any effort to find these kinds of stories. The same paper that reported on the Barahona case included an article about Marsee Strong, 34 and Edward Bailey, 40, now in jail after their nine-year-old son was found wandering the streets, naked, bruised and starving, one recent Saturday night. He informed police he had jumped out a bedroom window to "escape his abusers." Rushed to the hospital, he begged for food, said he hadn't eaten in three days, and was found to have "permanent marks of abuse" all over his body.

A shocked judge in the case said the boy looked "like he just came out of Auschwitz."

You see, no "scare tactics" are necessary at all. Every good teacher I ever knew wanted to save every kid they ever had in school.  That doesn't mean, no matter how much they tried, or how much they cried (or cursed in my case) when they failed, that the task of saving the most needy children was ever easy.

People who believe vouchers and charter schools will save all our children must be a collection of blind, deaf and dumb people.

Or they must be fools.

A Voucher Plan for Every Child and Every School

All parents are equal.
All parents are good.
Ergo:  Only the school the child attends
really matters in the end.

I've been watching a lot of Fox News lately and tuning in to Rush on radio; and I'm a huge fan of the film Waiting for Superman.  So, even though I'm a retired public school teacher, I am finally forced to admit the truth. We need a voucher & lottery system for all kids and all schools, a Wild West competition, if you will.  That is:  we allow successful schools to thrive and unsuccessful schools to wither.

(WAIT....keep reading....I might be joking....and you won't know if you don't finish.)

No more public school monopoly.  No more union teachers, sitting on their fat duffs and pillaging the State Treasury.

(Keep going...don't quit now.)

Competition, baby--kind of like McDonalds vs. Burger King vs. Burger Chef--and may the best burger and fries win.

(Patience, my liberal friends. Continue to the end.)

In fact, if you haven't seen my favorite movie, here's a Superman summary:  Five great kids enter the lottery to get into superior charter schools in the cities where they live.  They must flee the failing public schools, where teachers are pathetic losers and unionized malcontents.  Every parent is concerned about their child, of course. The movie makes that perfectly clear because there are no bad parents in the movie.  So we know bad parents do not exist.  We need more vouchers, charter schools, and free and open competition.

In fact, let's look at the famous "Parable of the Schools." (I just made it up.) First, we have Joseph R. Crappy Public School.  Until now, this school has enjoyed a monopoly.  This school even has a monoply on children with serious handicaps and hogs all the homeless children, too.  In this school they take children of all faiths, and no faith at all, and then because they have a monopoly, they can't even be bothered to read from the King James Bible--or is it the Latin Vulgate--or the Book of Mormon--or pray at the start of the school day.

Boy oh boy...those unionized teachers...they have some nerve, not even having the gumption to teach your kid good religious values any more.

Down the street we have Arne Duncan Charter School.  This school can save any child from Crappy Public School.  This school takes children whose parents are involved and sign their sons and daughters up for a special lottery, to gain admission.  If you have seen Waiting for Superman, you know every parent (or grandparent) stands behind their child and wants them to get into this school.  It is a matter of life and death, this escaping Crappy Public School.

Turn right at the next stoplight and you come to Stupendous Prep Private School.  This school comes in 57 varieties, including:  1) Christian School, where religion is taught and the King James Bible rules; 2) Hideaway School, a residential facility where tuition is prohibitive and only children of the upper classes can afford to go; 3) Elite Catholic School, where the Latin Vulgate Bible is preferred, and entry is determined by scores on entrance tests; 4) Muslim School, where the Koran is favored and few listeners of Rush dare to tred; 5 thru 57) other.

Now:  we all know that Joseph R. Crappy Public School is failing and why.  It's crappy unionized teachers.  We know good parents are demanding that their children be allowed to attend Arne Duncan Charter School, which is sure to be better, because there the crappy unionized teachers are kept at bay.  Meanwhile, the students at Stupendous Prep are happy and safe and learning religious values, of various kinds, in perfect good order. 

So:  Here's the plan that perfects the whole.  (This plan elevates me to U. S. Secretary of Education under President Newt Gingrich.) We already know that all parents are equal, that all parents are good, and that teachers in unions are minions of the Devil.  So we level the playing field for every child in America. 

First, we let Stupendous Prep receive regular state funding.

Second, we give every student at Crappy Public a voucher, so that now we have perfect school choice.

Third, since this is a business competition, we allow Crappy Public to operate by the same rules.  That is, what works for Arne Duncan Charter and Stupendous Prep, it's got to work for Crappy, too. 

I was going to say, "Suppose we take an extreme example...." But all parents are the same, as we have already mentioned.  So, imagine that we have a mom and dad who cook methamphetamines in their home.  And they get too busy running the family business to sign up for the lottery to get their child in the nearest charter school.  Well, if the child has serious problems and scores low on standardized tests, Crappy Public School does its duty for once, loosens its monopoly grip, and gives the child a voucher--actually sends them away to Arne Duncan Charter or Stupendous Prep, down the block.  These schools receive state funding, too, and we want every child to play on a level field.  So:  yes.  Stupendous Prep can no longer deny entry based on test scores or keep kids out by charging huge fees.  And Arne Duncan Charter has a civic duty to take students whose parents didn't sign them up, because charter schools exist to save kids who want to flee the failing regular schools. 

Or, now:  the kids the failing regular schools send them to save.

Homeless kids?  Yeah, break the Crappy Public School monopoly here, too.  We enter them all in a lottery and divide them up, so that Stupendous Prep gets a fair share of the pie, and next you know, these poor children are wearing monogrammed blazers and getting ready to go on to Harvard and Yale and Brown.  Handicapped kids?  BREAK that Crappy Public monopoly.  Kids with severe behavior disorders?  BREAK that monopoly. 

Honestly, how can such a brilliant plan go wrong?  From now on, in every school of every type, all kids take State standardized tests.  If Crappy Public has the lowest scores in 2013, then we do our duty to the children and allow the lowest scoring students, say the bottom 50, to load up the yellow bus and go on down the street, where Arne Duncan Charter will save them--raise them from the educational dead, like Lazarus, so to speak.  You don't ask parents if they want their kids to go, lazy unionized teachers!  You send those lowest scoring students away.

You can't be selfish and try to keep all the kids with the worst problems to yourselves.

In fact, the State can now close all juvenile detention facilities.  We give every kid with violence issues or a criminal record a chance to escape Crappy Public and send them to Christian School to learn from the King James Bible, and sit next to Governor Kasich's children, or we send them to Hideaway School, where Davis Guggenheim, producer of my favorite film, sends his kids and then watch the business model work in education to perfection.

Family background has no bearing on what happens in schools.  Schools and teachers alone shape kids.  So let's send all the boys and girls who really need help to the very best schools.  Open those doors wide Arne Duncan Charter School. Come on Stupendous Prep! 

You've got some saving to do.

Lesson One: A Tea Partier's Guide to Teaching in America



Abby, my oldest daughter,
was a very strong student.
So what is the key variable in schools?


I've been trying to pump up my blog traffic recently; and several of my conservative friends have been kind enough to log on and read a post or two.  I'm pretty much a flaming liberal, as most of them know--out of the closet, politically, I suppose you'd say.  I still have my Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker on my car from '04 and my Obama '08, too.  So, yeah, I'm coming from a different direction than the typical Tea Party supporter.

I probably ought  to scrape off Edwards' name, I admit...that cheating scumbag.

Then again...Newt...really???  But I digress.

That still doesn't mean a friend who lives across the street can't come out a couple of weeks ago and lend me his leaf-blower when he sees me using an old-fashioned rake.  He's a wonderful neighbor and a Tea Party supporter, himself; but when it comes to education issues he's probably a bit conflicted.  His daughter is a teacher in the public schools.  (I think he might even have cast his vote against Issue 2, here in Ohio.)

As far as I can tell, conservatives believe that American education is in precipitous decline, that our system sucks tax dollars out of citizens' pockets and leaves them with nothing but heartbreak, that teachers' unions exist only to protect the incompetent, that members of those unions are "thugs" and "parasites," and liberals are the minions of the devil. 

And so, only private schools and charter schools and vouchers and business control in education can save us in the end.

Another conservative gentleman I know, and a good man by every measure I can think of, told me recently he couldn't understand where I was coming from in a recent post, "U. S. Education by the Numbers."

So:  let me try to explain how teachers really feel to the Tea Party folks.  Imagine, my conservative friends, that your favorite football team (let's say the Bengals) is finally playing well.  At the end of three quarters, Andy Dalton has the boys in stripes leading 21-10.  Then the referees wave the Cincinnati players off the gridiron and the Ravens are allowed to keep throwing passes down an empty field and they score six touchdowns and the fans in the stands start booing the defenders and crying in their $8 beers.

That doesn't make a bit of sense.  Yet, it's exactly the kind of comparison critics make when denigrating American public schools, and praising, for example, the "superior" Japanese education system. Here's how a teacher in this country sees the situation:  Japanese children attend school  240 days a year.  U. S. students go to class for 180 days. 

Four quarters of football vs. three.

Or:  consider the South Korean education system--also held up as model of success, and then used to shine a glaring light on America's failing schools.  In a recent international comparison, South Korean kids finished #1 in reading, #1 in math and #3 in science, out of 65 nations.  American students were #12 in reading, #17 in science and #25 in math.

If you're a Tea Party American, at this point, you probably gnash your teeth and start to grumble about the evil unions.  But if you're a Teacher American (even a Teacher American/Union Member American) the number that grabs your attention is "14." 

That's how many hours the average South Korean student spends every day in school, completing homework, and attending after-hours tutoring sessions, a kind of mania in that nation.

If you're a public school teacher in the U. S. you think, "If I asked students to shoulder that kind of load parents would be apoplextic.  They'd be calling my principal and demanding that she lop off my head and they'd want her to spike it on the front lawn of the school to serve as a warning. 

So, you dream of saying to a conservative friend:  "Both of us are going to get paint brushes and buckets and ladders and we are going to start painting this house today, at 8 a.m.  The winner, the person who covers the most surface, before they run out of paint, is going to receive $100,000 and the loser will get nothing but a lump of coal in their stocking on payday." 

Then you add this caveat:  "I will use these fourteen buckets of paint.  You can have nine."

Your conservative friend is going to question the fairness of such a contest, but that's how teachers see it when they hear South Korean schools are better--or schools in Finland or Liechtenstein or Glennbeckistan--and the reason for the difference is that America's teachers are unionized crooks and fools.  If an American kid spends nine hours on academics, which is close to the average, you figure that five hours extra every day, multiplied over the years, might give South Korean kids a slight advantage, academically speaking.

I suppose, in one respect, I think like a Tea Partier, myself.  I don't believe that U. S. education can ever be fixed by pouring in more money.  In fact, my experiences in life (I was a lazy student once) and in the classroom seem to prove that if you give me 35 students, ready to work, and I am willing to work hard, too, and parents will back me up if I'm truly, truly demanding, then I can teach effectively in a barn, with all my students seated on bales of hay.

That doesn't mean that the conservative perscription for fixing the public schools is correct.  That's just my spiel for today.

Vouchers, Charter Schools and Terrible Parents

There's no substitute for a good home.

THERE SEEMS TO BE A GENERAL CONSENSUS abroad in America today that schools are failing and our economy is sinking...and...well...it's all the teachers' fault. 

If you have any doubt, watch any interview by the self-righteous Michelle Rhee. Rent the incredibly simplistic movie, Waiting for Superman. Or pick up a copy of Steven Brill's book, Class Warfare:  Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools. 

You know Brill knows how to fix America's  schools.  He's a lawyer.

So:  if we're going to fix schools what do we do first?  Some people say, "Take away tenure from teachers." (I think Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity and pretty much everyone at Fox News want to burn unionized teachers at the stake.)  Let's give parents vouchers. Let them flee the failing public schools! Create more charter schools!  And draw up all kinds of standardized tests, tie teacher pay to scores, and watch the magical transformation begin.

I guess I'm not as smart as Rhee or Brill; but I did spend 33 years in a classroom, vs. 3 for Rhee and 0 for Brill. So, I've seen the impact parents have on kids. Unlike Brill, I'm not naive enough to believe you can fix schools until you fix humanity.

I know what good teachers can do--and for decades tried to do all the good I could. But maybe what we really need in this country are Parent Vouchers. You want equal opportunity for children? Let them have vouchers to escape crappy homes. Think about the expression:  “Like father, like son.”  What if the father is a son-of-bitch?

When I was new to the classroom, I remember our superintendent, Dr. Charles Waple, telling a story from his early days in education. He was a sixth grade teacher at the time. One evening he called to acquaint a father with problems he was having in class with his son. The boy was not completing his work and Waple hoped this could be addressed at home. The voice on the other end replied gruffly, “I’ll take care of it.”

The next day the boy came to class sobbing. Dad took care of it, alright. 

He shot the boy’s dog.

For three decades, I stood at the front of a classroom and gave it my best shot. I happened to work in a very good district (Loveland City Schools); and most parents were very good. The bad ones could be really bad, though.

YOU HAD ALL KINDS OF PROBLEMS IN THE HOME--and tried to mitigate the damage--and save everyone you could. Unfortunately, you couldn't save them all. I remember a great educator, Paula Dupuy, a counselor for our junior high (we became a middle school later). She tried to save Phil, the last of the Norman children to come through our doors; but Mr. and Mrs.Norman didn't believe getting to school was a priority. Phil missed 51.5 days in a single semester, even though we took mom and dad to court four different times and even with Ms. Dupuy driving out to the home many mornings to pick the boy up. It was a kind of Norman family tradition. Every member of the family missed at least fifty days every year and Phil's oldest brother once stayed home 140 days in a single year. 

How about a voucher for Bobby? Bobby doesn’t live with his mother. He doesn’t live with his father. He lives with his grandmother. Bobby is, how shall we say this, the product of incest, and his parents are brother and sister. Bobby, we teachers know, is being raised by a grandmother. (Actually, he has only one.) And from what teachers can tell from dealing with the woman, granny is mentally ill. 

What about Joey? Joey is a C student—funny as hell. He and I get along great. Sometimes his work is done. Sometimes it isn’t. Some days all Joey has to offer is a smile. I keep on him and he takes any chiding with a grin. Joey isn’t the problem. 

Neither am I. 

I know the family is struggling financially. One day I ask Joey about his dad. He responds, “He’s a useless meth head.” 

He says this without rancor, because Joey is funny, but his words stick with me the rest of my career.

I could go on and on and on--every good teacher could--but two more examples should suffice. 

A friend of mine is a third grade teacher in another school district. Recently, a poor little eight-year-old came into her classroom and put his head down on his desk and just cried. He was tired, for one thing, and tired of being laughed at by other children, so my friend had to dig to get to the bottom of the story. It seems mom was a drunk, and he was up most of the previous night, listening to her argure first with neighbors and then police. So the boy hadn't slept much. After the police left, mom got it in mind that her boy needed a haircut.

So she shaved random patches into his head.

Like every good teacher in America, my friend did what she could to soften the blows dealt out by reality. But teachers aren't magicians and they don't have the luxury of standing on the sidelines like Rhee and Brill and preaching about what they would do to if they were actually in a classroom where saving every child, according to them, can be so easily done.

ARE VOUCHERS AND CHARTER SCHOOLS, then, really the answer? What says the poor girl in baggy clothes? She sits quietly in my class every day, hunched over her desk, long black curls falling in cascades to obscure her face. 

Over the years I pride myself on getting students involved. In this case, nothing works. I try questions which require “yes” or “no” answers. The girl won’t look me in the eye. Most days she seems in distress.

She appears friendless and alone and grades are poor. So we try engaging the parents. (Isn’t that the key to school reform?) I call home several times and say I’m worried, that their daughter seems depressed. They insist that everything is fine at home. She just doesn’t like school.

By end of first semester teachers are so worried we ask for a face-to-face meeting with mom and dad. The father is professionally dressed, articulate, and seems concerned. The mother is supportive. They want to help. We tell them the girl is suffering great emotional pain, almost surely in need of counseling. The parents thank us for our interest and say they will take this under consideration. When they stand to leave dad smiles and shakes hands all around. 

We call home periodically the rest of the year. Nothing helps. The girl is miserable and we meet with parents again in spring. (Again--we call them. They don't call us.) She just does pass seventh grade. 

The next year the school provides an aide to see if that might help. Eventually, the aide and the girl form a bond and she admits she is being sexually abused by her father and older brother. Dad gets arrested. The brother goes to juvenile detention. And if you’re any kind of teacher you kick yourself for not seeing this situation clearly.

SADLY, RHEE AND BRILL--and that idiotic movie--don't offer any kind of solutions to deal with these terrible realities.