Writing instruction is under assault. Already, so many folks are cutting corners on it because the weight of bubble tests rules the administrator’s roost… and while admins will say writing instruction is important, they also say that about music, art, technology and so on.

But when they cut our resources, they show their priorities. And writing is not one of them.

We get test prep materials, intervention courses and remedial interventions up the yin-yang… and they are exceptionally focused on bubbles. And now that they are going to swell all our classes by 20% and emphasize the “bottom line” even more due to draconian budget cuts (i.e. we need higher test scores) writing instruction just feels as if it’s on the same chopping block as music: if they don’t test it, why are we teaching it?

Is that the nation we are becoming? If they don’t test it, why are we teaching it?

Today is my first day of summer vacation. My school was one of the last to close in the state of California which means that I am fried, frazzled and freakin’ spent.

On one hand that’s good because to me it means I left it all on the table. I gave sweat, blood and tears this year. I also laughed a lot. And as I reflect upon my recent blog posts, I realize far too much of the joy of what I do day in and day out is NOT evident in my writing.

That’s sad. Therefore, I decided to insert a fart joke right here.

Fart joke.

See, they always work. (I really shouldn’t be giving away the keys to my writing techniques but hey, I have more… like booger picking references and belly button lint allusions.)

But alas, I digress.

It’s SO HARD to keep a sense of joy about things these days when so much of the news about schools is so raw and salty. Though I am still pretty young (I graduated high school in 1985… you do the math) I have never seen the mood so dour. And it’s cause of our finances.

The economic meltdown has come to town. I mean no one has ever really held up the city of Los Angeles as a pillar of educational excellence (pockets, yes — on a large scale, no.) But when I see headlines like these in the L.A. Times, I just want to bury my head under the covers and pretend that the implications of this decimation to our school funding isn’t going to screw over tens of thousands of kids in the next few years. Not just a few, but tens of thousands of students are going to be negatively impacted in a very direct, very severe manner.

So trying to put a smile on my face — and the face of others — feels a little Pollyannish.

On the other hand, I am supremely optimistic because our schools are long overdue for immense change and I think that this destruction of the dysfunctional status quo can be the impetus to bringing in a host of new ideas, new energy and new opportunities. People are going to be forced to do things differently — and that excites me. And there are very few sacred cows right now that aren’t being severely scrutinized. From the Dept. of Ed having a “rename NCLB” contest because of its abject failure in so many regards to the Governator showing the hangman’s noose to the dead tree textbook publishers to unions having their feet held to the fire for trying so hard to protest the weakest links in the teaching chain at the expense of the professional reputation of the rest of us, so much good stuff is happening under foot right now.

And so, summer begins. Maybe I’ll take a break. A break from blogging. A break from writing new books. A break from developing new curriculum materials to help reinvent some of the fossilized, static, outdated materials currently being peddled to us in our modern-day classrooms. Maybe I’ll take a break from thinking of ways I can be of service to this field I so dearly love.

Then again, maybe not. When you avocation and your vocation are the same thing, you’re a lucky son of a gun.

And that’s why I have no problem making — and smiling at — fart jokes. We need them, now more than ever.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrpppppppppppp!

There is no way to work in a school today without the very clear recognition that the cracks are expanding. The question is, how do we prevent ourselves from cracking up amid the crumbling?

Kids used to just fall through cracks. But “kids”, at least as the phrase’s original connotation indicated to me, implied single kids (despite the use of the plural which I took to mean “one at a time.”) Or it meant a certain type of kid. It left one with the impression that a “kid falling through the cracks in the system” was an anomaly, a rare, but sad and regrettable bird, one that someone somewhere was diligently working to prevent in the future.

But nowadays, this expression has taken on (and is about to take on even more so) a whole new meaning.

Not just some kids, not just a bunch of kids, but many, many, many kids will fall through the cracks in the system in the next few years because the system is officially cracked and these budget cuts are taking a drill bit to the fault line.

For example, my own school district has forecast a projected 16 million dollar deficit after the operation of the 2009/2010 school year so something like 18% — 22% of our district’s teaching force was just pink slipped.

We’re still going to service roughly the same amount of kids, though. We’re just going to do it with 20% less educators (and a slashing of “fluff” classes like computers, art, music, and so on).

And all this as we face the oh-so-gentle stick of NCLB. Lest anyone forget, my high school is sinking towards Probation Level 4 in the DoE Circle of Educational Hell. I’m sure that less people actually trying to remediate our issues is going to help a heck of a lot, though. Wonder if they’ll take that into consideration when evaluating our bubble tests next year?

They raise the bar. They slash the resources to achieve the targets. Then they paint the people who work there as imbeciles who couldn’t teach a hungry monkey how to peel a banana.

I mean from my Superintendent on down to lil’ old me, what’s a fella to do? I know, I know, roll with the punches… but how many more punches can we all be expected to take before we are considered to be too punch drunk to soberly and successfully go about performing our jobs?

And it ain’t just Lynwood that is cracked. As this report states, nearly 60% of this Chicago school’s students will not be graduating from 8th grade, to the great shock of both the students and parents, of course. I mean I too could clearly see how my child was all beefed up on books and ready for Harvard but then voila, turns out she’s flunked 8th grade (along with the lion’s share of her peers) and here I was totally clueless about my kid’s — or her entire graduating class’s — performance. Totally believable.

Not that the school is above reproach, though. I’m sorry, but if 60% of your entire 8th grade is failing, guess what folks? The people working at the school are failing, too. Take some freakin’ ownership!

In that spirit, are Lynwood’s shortcoming my own fault as well? Absolutely. I must, if I am to accept any credit in the areas where we achieve, accept culpability for our shortcoming’s as well. After all, am I not my co-teacher’s keeper?

Usually, I’d crack a smarmy joke right about now in this point of the blog. Go for the smile with a small twist of the knife to boot. But guess what. These cracks are serious business and where the hell are our kids going to be in 3 years if we continue down this path.

Crack. It’s like we’re smoking it.

“Reading” is a more fractured experience than ever before. Simply put, there are different types, different means and different levels to it. And unfortunately, in our schools we are mistakenly conjoining conversations about reading things such as Les Miserables in with reading twitter, with reading the lifestyle page of the USA Today, with reading an email and with reading GQ magazine… as if reading is reading is reading.

And it’s not.

There are different types which require different styles and different skills because they have different objectives.

Moreover, the conversation many people in education are having about reading right now strikes me as if we are all-too-often talking about apples and oranges, almost as an agumentative tool. One person will salute the literacy skills requisite to reading the Huffinton Post and another will take umbrage with the comment on behalf of reading Crime and Punishment. Another speaks thoughtfully about the benefits of reading Ayn Rand and someone else will counter with the detriment that reading txt messaging is doing to student writing in the classroom.

Reading is fractured. Our conversation is not. This schism is giving me schisms.

Is it time for the implementation of a new reading lexicon?

Let’s be honest… to a quite certain extent America is have a crisis of administrative leadership in our schools. It’s the unspoken calamity. People blame teachers for all that is wrong but the truth is our nation’s principals and vice principals are woefully under-prepared and under-resourced to do their jobs… which really is all about empowering me with the ability to better do my job.

Look at my school, for example. We have only 1 principal and 3 VPs in charge of nearly:
-4,000 students
-175 teachers
-15 counselors
-at least 50 – 75 other “classified” employees.
(These are ballpark numbers; they keep the real numbers under wraps around here for some reason and year to year I never know what’s really what. Plus things are always in flux. One year we were near 5,000 kids. This year, due to budget cuts, we are looking at losing 18% of our teaching staff. Ya just never know what’s what.)

Of course, the responsibilities for my administrators above don’t even take into account the requisite interactions with the teacher’s union, parents, other principals, conferences, meetings with the school board, the district personnel and on and on with which the P and VP’s must deal. Like these administrators even have a prayer of being able to successfully navigate all of the discipline, grades, budgets, emergencies, proms, politics, sporting events, meals, tardy sweeps, staff meetings and so on.

In a word their assignment is “untenable”. Truly. If you look at all that our school site administrators are asked to do, it’s simply not possible for them to be able to accomplish everything we are asking them to accomplish — especially if we want them to accomplish their mandates excellently well. Crud, I never thought I’d say this as a teacher, but I really think we need more warm bodies in the administrative game because with such limited resources leading our schools, how in the world can we truly be expecting them — or us — to flourish? Of course, flourish is a word that they we will all pay lip service to but let’s be honest, when we view school site administrators, we kinda get the feeling that they are merely hoping to survive, to navigate this unmanageable ship through a rocky sea without losing too many passengers to the wild waves.

Some, we know will be lost. But c’est la vie, right. There’s always next year.

And oddly enough, I like my principal. And the VP’s. They are not bad people… they are just swamped, handcuffed people who are overwhelmed, overworked, overtaxed and under-resourced. I mean, when I see that 250 teachers were axed by Rhee in DC, I gotta wonder, were these folks given support, encouragement, training, clear expectations, adequate interaction with principals and school site administrators before they were cut loose? ( I can only guess what Rhee would say. But what would the teachers who work with — not for — with Rhee say.)

If our educational ship is sinking, doesn’t a look deserve to be given to the performance of each school site captain? I mean ya can’t blame the rowers if we crash into the rocks?

Look, I am not a snoot. I believe in the value of work — real work — and I hold tremendous admiration for anyone who straps it up and puts in an honest day’s effort for an honest day’s pay. But there’s a part of me that has to laugh — so I don’t cry — when I read things like this report from career builder which highlights 20 Jobs You Can Get with a High School Diploma.

Look at how many jobs on this list pull down annual salaries that are in the 20′s. And then 30′s. And then 40′s? Now I know I live in California so things are skewed but for a family of 4 to live off of a $40,000 per year salary, well… let’s look at it.

Assume this family pays income tax. Ding!
And health care costs? (Don’t forget the dentist.) Ding!
And drives a car. With auto insurance and annual vehicle registration. Ding!
Plus, they need food, shelter and clothing. Ding!Ding!Ding!
Don’t forget 4 birthdays to celebrate, some holidays, a few special occasions and a few other moments where it’s just nice to go out to dinner or something. Ding!
Uhm, toilet paper, soap, toothpaste and so on. Ding!
Plus… well, do I need to Ding! on. I don’t think I can. We are probably out of Ding! room at this point. And this is for the person that draws a salary in the 40′s. How much more can a person who earns a salary in the 30′s be squeezed? Or the 20′s?

(Side note: Hmmm, how much is the starting teacher salary in your district? And we wonder why people are not flocking to the field of professional education.)

Now extrapolate this thinking out to those that do NOT have a high school diploma and whew, take a deep breath. According to the U.S. Census Bureau…

Look, I have no problem if one of my students wants to become a manicurist. I just want to empower them with the opportunity to own the dang nail salon if they so choose because at an average annual salary of $19,978.00 it’s gonna be tough to eat more than ramin noodles for lunch some days.

As the President has made abundantly clear, he believes the nation needs more post-high school education. He’s lobbying for it. He’s speaking about it. He’s even putting our money where his mouth is.

And then you read info like this (as reported in the Los Angeles Times) stating that University of California’s freshman class drops by 6.8%:

Freshman enrollment at the University of California will be 6.8% lower this fall, a drop of 2,603 students from last year that closely matches a reduction the university sought because of budget shortfalls, UC officials said Tuesday.

In all, 35,435 students from California and other states have told one of UC’s nine undergraduate campuses that they intend to enroll as fall freshmen, compared with 38,038 last year.

Geez, what to do? On one hand we know what needs to be done. We need to invest more money in education at every level of the system. On the other hand, the citizens of the U.S. are going to have to pay for it and the only way the government gets to pay for anything is by spending the tax money of its citizens.

So who’s up for higher taxes? Obviously, not enough of us. Matter of fact, we want lower taxes. Or better yet, no taxes. But we want all the services… please don’t cut those.

What is the cost of a highly educated citizenry? What is the expense of a poorly educated citizenry? It all brings to mind one of my favorite quotes of all time:

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
–Derek Bok

Or as the sign says, “Get a brain, MORANS!” (Go USA)

Okay, I am not saying the book is dead. No way. But reading is changing. It already has.

And this change will continue. And our schools MUST get on the bus if we are to serve the needs of our students in a manner that is authentic to the needs they will have over the course of the next few decades.

Responding to reading in schools is changing as well. After all, for a whole lot of years our schools have been almost Pavlovian about the manner by which we operate:

Red this book… write this essay… repeat.

Now our nation’s best teachers don’t do this — they always bring life to the classroom — but come on, we know that a whole lotta of American classrooms operate — or at least prior to the year 2000 — operated, very much in this manner… with the occasional speech/presentation mixed in to add some flavor, of course. (And don’t forget the bubble test! LOL.)

But I was just reading Thomas Newkirk’s book The School Essay Manifesto: Reclaiming the Essay for Students And Teachers (yes, that Thomas Newkirk… the man who wrote the quite popular new book Holding On to Good Ideas in a Time of Bad Ones: Six Literacy Principles Worth Fighting For) where Barry Lane says in the intro: “Newkirk’s basic hypothesis is that the school essay as we know it is an obsolete assignment that evolved out of the need for teachers and textbook companies to control student writing, organize student’s thoughts and more easily grade writing assignments.”

Wow, powerful stuff!

And this is why I say the book is dead. Because it no longer is the emperor-type ruler which it once was. Books are being forced to make space on the mountaintop.

It’s also why reading — and writing — as they exist in our schools (how we teach/what we teach) is changing. BECAUSE IT MUST! While we are doing some things well, we are also doing some things poorly and the advent of technology allows us to rid ourselves of what is stale and ineffective (prosperous as some of these “educational solutions” have been for some folks over the past few decades) and bring in a host of “new” tools that add to new abilities to our arsenal. Gunpowder changed warfare. The Steam engine changed transportation. Microprocessors have changed reading.

Fact is, there are new literacies out there — new ways of reading, new tools to use to read, new, new, new. I mean, as I type this right now, there is probably somebody inventing yet another way for me to interact with text of somehow. Truly, I never even knew what hyperlinking was when I earned my master’s degree. Now, well, it’s fundamental to my blogging because reading has changed and readers have changed right along with it.

So the book is dead. At least as the grand emperor, primary, if not sole, mechanism of all reading. I still do not know how comfortable I am with this idea, but just because I do not like the reality of something doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. Room has to be made at the top of the mountain for more than just dead tree books (which are the primary passion of my life. After all, I read them, I write them, I feed my family by them. Trust me, dead tree books are HUGE to me… and still I blog on a ning.)

Yep, the book is dead. But long live the book!!

Teaching kids who are not motivated to learn wears on you. Sure, Hollywood movies make it all seem as if being in a job where a large amount of kids who are not motivated to participate in their own education simply requires one simple “epiphany” (either by the teacher or the students) in order to right the ship and send everyone off into a bright, bold and bountiful future… but the reality of it is much different.

Much.

It challenges you. It frustrates you. It makes you call into question why you even bother to do this kind of work. And anyone who does not pay heed to these ideas doesn’t know what it means to be on the front lines, what it means to be working in a school with an outrageous dropout rate… what it means to try and care more about a kid’s education more than the kid (or the parent of the kid) does themself.

To take liberties with an old cliche’, “You can lead a student to knowledge, but you can’t make them think.”

Indeed there are days where I feel like the Pied Piper, where no matter what I do with a class of students, they are on the bus, all in, eager, excited and fired up to go push our boundaries into a whole host of new, exciting intellectual directions.

But there are scores of kids who just don’t play ball floating through our American schools. Their attendance is horrible, their homework is non-existent and their sense of actually wanting to take an active role in their own education is horrifically low. And then, when they show up at the end of the year, having missed 8 of the 14 prior days of class, without even attempting to give a half-hearted effort at turning in a final project, what do you do?

It wears on you.

I’ve already spent so many of the arrows in my quiver. I’ve yelled. I’ve cajoled. I’ve been soft and cut slack and I’ve been firm and drawn lines in the sand. I’ve tried to get other people at school to join forces, I’ve made attempts to work with parents… what more is there to do? 7 days of school left and there is no way for this kid not to get an F… and I am sure that my class is not the only one like this for this student.

And then NCLB comes in and paints me and my school district as if it’s our fault that these kids are under-performing.

Is it the dentist’s fault when a patient gets a cavity?

Everyone on the internet has a perspective to sell. Simply put, I don’t believe that there is anything remotely related to objective data being published about our schools right now.

Look too closely at any aspect of things and you are almost assured of detecting bias For example…

Charter schools are the big buzz these days. But are they the magic pill that’s being sold? Of course not. Yet are they commendable in a variety of ways. For sure.

To that end Stanford just put out a report on charters, a pretty sweeping one that is well-summarized in this L.A. Times article.

Now as I state all the time, I think the assessments for all these studies are flawed (i.e. have you heard me holla about bubble tests before?) so I don’t put all that much stock into much of the data I am fed. But it’s certainly interesting to see how people are viewing — and informing others — about what’s going on.

As written, the Los Angeles Times article says, “California charter schools stronger in reading than math.”

But it also could have said…

“Statistics prove charter schools outperform traditional schools.”

Or it could have said…

“For all the hoopla, charter schools only negligibly better.”

Or it could have said…

“Over 33% of charters deliver worse results than traditional schools.”

And each and every headline would have been acceptable (based on the information in the article).

The point is, how the news is framed matters immensely — it’s an activity I do with my students all the time to demonstrate bias in the media — and while this reporter seems to have worked hard to be fair, there is no doubt that through the examples above we can all see that if there’s an axe to grind, data can be easily manipulated to do it.

It’s why Fox News and MSNBC can report on the same story and see two totally different things.

You think our schools don’t do this stuff? Our politicians? NCLB policy wonks? Voucher advocates? Union heads? The ACLU? The NEA?

It’s just amazing the ways in which headlines can be written. So how important is the manner by which information is framed to the perception we take away from the information? I’d suggest it might even be more important than the information itself!

Next time you see numbers on education, see how they’ve been set up and presented. Remember, it matters. It matters a lot.

(NOTE: This post was inspired by a good friend of mine, Dr. Jerry Harvey, who turned me on to a winner of a book called, How to Lie with Statistics.)